A comprehensive study of time-of-flight non-line-of-sight imaging
Universidad de Zaragoza–I3A（萨拉戈萨大学–I3A）；University of Wisconsin–Madison（威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校）；Department of Data Science, Inha University（数据科学系，inha大学）；Politecnico di Milano（米兰理工学院）
Julio Marco, Adrian Jarabo, Ji Hyun Nam, Alberto Tosi, Diego Gutierrez, Andreas Velten
Time-of-Flight non-line-of-sight (ToF NLOS) imaging techniques provide state-of-the-art reconstructions of scenes hidden around corners by inverting the optical path of indirect photons scattered by visible surfaces and measured by picosecond resolution sensors. The emergence of a wide range of ToF NLOS imaging methods with heterogeneous formulae and hardware implementations obscures the assessment of both their theoretical and experimental aspects. We present a comprehensive study of a representative set of ToF NLOS imaging methods by discussing their similarities and differences under common formulation and hardware. We first outline the problem statement under a common general forward model for ToF NLOS measurements, and the typical assumptions that yield tractable inverse models. We discuss the relationship of the resulting simplified forward and inverse models to a family of Radon transforms, and how migrating these to the frequency domain relates to recent phasor-based virtual line-of-sight imaging models for NLOS imaging that obey the constraints of conventional lens-based imaging systems. We then evaluate performance of the selected methods on hidden scenes captured under the same hardware setup and similar photon counts. Our experiments show that existing methods share similar limitations on spatial resolution, visibility, and sensitivity to noise when operating under equal hardware constraints, with particular differences that stem from method-specific parameters. We expect our methodology to become a reference in future research on ToF NLOS imaging to obtain objective comparisons of existing and new methods.
Time of flight based Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging approaches require precise calibration of illumination and detector positions on the visible scene to produce reasonable results. If this calibration error is sufficiently high, reconstruction can fail entirely without any indication to the user. In this work, we highlight the necessity of building autocalibration into NLOS reconstruction in order to handle mis-calibration. We propose a forward model of NLOS measurements that is differentiable with respect to both, the hidden scene albedo, and virtual illumination and detector positions. Wi…
Robust segmentation of hair from portrait images remains challenging: hair does not conform to a uniform shape, style or even color; dark hair in particular lacks features. We present a novel computational imaging solution that tackles the problem from both input and processing fronts. We explore using Time-of-Flight (ToF) RGBD sensors on recent mobile devices. We first conduct a comprehensive analysis to show that scattering and inter-reflection cause different noise patterns on hair vs. non-hair regions on ToF images, by changing the light path and/or combining multiple paths. We then develo…
Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging and tracking is an emerging technology that allows the shape or position of objects around corners or behind diffusers to be recovered from transient, time-of-flight measurements. However, existing NLOS approaches require the imaging system to scan a large area on a visible surface, where the indirect light paths of hidden objects are sampled. In many applications, such as robotic vision or autonomous driving, optical access to a large scanning area may not be available, which severely limits the practicality of existing NLOS techniques. Here, we propose a new …
Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging is based on capturing the multi-bounce indirect reflections from the hidden objects. Active NLOS imaging systems rely on the capture of the time of flight of light through the scene, and have shown great promise for the accurate and robust reconstruction of hidden scenes without the need for specialized scene setups and prior assumptions. Despite that existing methods can reconstruct 3D geometries of the hidden scene with excellent depth resolution, accurately recovering object textures and appearance with high lateral resolution remains an challenging problem.…
Non-line-of-sight imaging with arbitrary relay surface geometries via 3D Gaussian Transient Rendering
Department of Precise Instrument, Tsinghua University（清华大学精密仪器系）；Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学电子工程系）；Yau Mathematical Science Center, Tsinghua University（清华大学姚期智科学中心）
Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras require active illumination to obtain depth information thus the power of illumination directly affects the performance of ToF cameras. Traditional ToF imaging algorithms is very sensitive to illumination and the depth accuracy degenerates rapidly with the power of it. Therefore, the design of a power efficient ToF camera always creates a painful dilemma for the illumination and the performance trade-off. In this paper, we show that despite the weak signals in many areas under extreme short exposure setting, these signals as a whole can be well utilized through a l…
University of Bonn（波恩大学）；Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）
Non-line-of-sight reconstruction (NLoS) is a novel indirect imaging modality that aims to recover objects or scene parts outside the field of view from measurements of light that is indirectly scattered off a directly visible, diffuse wall. Despite recent advances in acquisition and reconstruction techniques, the well-posedness of the problem at large, and the recoverability of objects and their shapes in particular, remains an open question. The commonly employed Fermat path criterion is rather conservative with this regard, as it classifies some surfaces as unrecoverable, although they contr…
Computer vision is one of the most active research fields in information technology today. Giving machines and robots the ability to see and comprehend the surrounding world at the speed of sight creates endless potential applications and opportunities. Feature detection and description algorithms can be indeed considered as the retina of the eyes of such machines and robots. However, these algorithms are typically computationally intensive, which prevents them from achieving the speed of sight real-time performance. In addition, they differ in their capabilities and some may favor and work be…
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）
As an emerging technology that has attracted huge attention, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging can reconstruct hidden objects by analyzing the diffuse reflection on a relay surface, with broad application prospects in the fields of autonomous driving, medical imaging, and defense. Despite the challenges of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and high ill-posedness, NLOS imaging has been developed rapidly in recent years. Most current NLOS imaging technologies use conventional physical models, constructing imaging models through active or passive illumination and using reconstruction algorithms to r…
Non-line-of-Sight Imaging via Neural Transient Fields
ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学）；DGene, Inc.（德晋医疗科技有限公司）；Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海技术物理研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海微系统与信息技术研究所）；Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Vision and Imaging（上海智能视觉影像工程技术研究中心）
