A Maximum-Flow Approach to the Volumetric Reconstruction Problem

We present a 3D reconstruction technique based on the maximum-flow formulation. Starting with a set of calibrated images, we globally search for the most probable 3D model given the photoconsistency and the spatial continuity constraints. This search is done radially from the center of the reconstruction volume; therefore imposing a radial topology. The fact that cameras are arbitrarily positioned around the scene presents challenges for managing occlusion, especially when applying global smoothing. We solve this problem by proposing an iterative occlusion management mechanism, and a new way of looking at surface smoothing and discontinuities that takes photoconsistency into account. Experiments show that our method is relatively fast and robust when dealing with simple objects, even in noisy conditions.