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Results from Summer 2012

We spent the summer of 2012 enhancing our 3D scanner. The 3D scan below with 3.5 million points shows that the system can now produce high-resolution 3D models. Some improvement was the result of integrating code from the open source projects Point Cloud Library & OpenCV, but the largest improvement came from camera recalibration.

Why did we need to recalibrate?
Over the last year it seems that 4 of the 8 image sensor boards in our prototype had vertically shifted up to 5 pixels since the last calibration. Because stereo cameras need to be calibrated to within at least 1/2 pixel, a 5 pixel error is completely unacceptable. The 5-pixel shift represents a very small mechanical change. The pixels on our image sensor are 2.2 microns per side, so a 5-pixel error is a shift of only 11 microns: less than the diameter of one human hair!

The quality of our 3D models improved significantly once we corrected the problem by shifting our images up or down the appropriate number of pixels.

Why wasn’t this shift discovered sooner?
Our stereoscopic camera system had been producing good results, so we incorrectly assumed that the cameras were still calibrated. Because we trusted the calibration, we spent the summer carefully reviewing everything else in the system. During our search we optimized the code to improve 3D reconstruction speed and quality, but certain problems remained. It wasn’t until this September that we identified and fixed the calibration problem.

This experience has demonstrated the robustness of our 3D scanning approach which uses both passive pixel matching and pattern projection. Before we fixed the calibration errors, the passive pixel-matching part of our scanning process was effectively disabled. Our robust pattern projection is the only reason that we were able to produce usable 3D models from such a poor calibration. Now that we have both good calibration and solid pattern projection, our results are the best ever.

Next Steps
There are still some loose ends from this summer’s work that we want to tie up by the end of the year. These last few tweaks will improve 3D accuracy and reduce or eliminate the distortion in surfaces that should be flat.

Finally, we have also gained a valuable insight for the next design. The new system will be designed to maintain camera rigidity/stability to within about 1/10 micron. This is about 100x better than the current prototype. We plan to finalize the new system design and begin construction in 2013.

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