3D reconstruction of under water coral reef images using low cost multi-view cameras

Abstract

This research describes a 3D reconstruction method of coral reefs using low-cost underwater cameras. We employed a multi-view camera system consisting of 3 identical waterproof cameras arrayed on a stereo-base, and collected footage of the seafloor in linear transects. To develop a 3D-representation of the seafloor image-pairs were first extracted from the video footage manually. Then corresponding points are automatically extracted from the stereo-pairs by the well known SIFT algorithm, which is invariant to scale, translation, and rotation. Based on the resultant x,y,z point cloud the 3D appearance of the coral reef is approximated by a Triangulation technique utilizing Delaunay Triangulation. The experimental result demonstrate robust 3D reconstruction with manual adjustment of camera A, B or C selection.