Ellipsoid reconstruction from three perspective views

Abstract

We present a method to reconstruct an ellipsoid from its occluding contours observed in three images. We derive a linear relationship between an ellipsoid and its perspective projection. From this relationship, we show that, if cameras are calibrated, an ellipsoid can be reconstructed from its three views and the solution is, in general, unique; if the cameras are weakly calibrated, then the reconstruction is also unique but up to projectivity. Our method has been successfully tested on synthetic data and on real image data.