Refractive Height Fields from Single and Multiple Images

We propose a novel framework for reconstructing homogenous, transparent, refractive height-fields from a single viewpoint. The height-field is imaged against a known
planar background, or sequence of backgrounds. Unlike
existing approaches that do a point-by-point reconstruction
– which is known to have intractable ambiguities – our
method estimates and optimizes for the entire height-field
at the same time. The formulation supports shape recovery
from measured distortions (deflections) or directly from the
images themselves, including from a single image. We report results for a variety of refractive height-fields showing
significant improvement over prior art.

• Machine Perception