Three-dimensional data merging using Holoimage

. Three-dimensional data merging is vital for full-field three-dimensional 3D shape measurement. All 3D range data patches, ac-quired from either different sensors or the same sensor in different view-ing angles, have to be merged into a single piece to facilitate future data analysis. A novel method for 3D data merging using Holoimage is pro-posed. Similar to the 3D shape measurement system using a phase-shifting method, Holoimage is a phase-shifting–based computer synthe-sized fringe image. The 3D information is retrieved from Holoimage using a phase-shifting method. If two patches of 3D data with overlap-ping areas are rendered by OpenGL, the overlapping areas are resolved by the graphics pipeline, that is, only the front geometry can be visual-ized. Therefore, the merging is performed if the front geometry informa-tion can be obtained. Holoimage is to obtain the front geometry by pro-jecting the fringe patterns onto the rendered scene. We also demonstrated that each point of the geometry in the overlapping area can be obtained by averaging the corresponding point of the geometries reconstructed from Holoimage for each patch. Moreover, using Holoim-age, the texture can also be obtained. Both simulation and experiments demonstrated the success of the proposed method. © 2008 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. DOI: 10.1117/1.2898902 Subject terms: holoimage; merging; phase shifting; measurement; 3-D range data