Neural computation approach for developing a 3-D shape reconstruction model

The shape from shading (SFS) problem refers to the well-known fact that mos t real images usually contain specular components and are affected by unkno wn reflectivity. In this paper, these limitations are addressed and a new n eural-based three-dimensional (3-D) shape reconstruction model is proposed. The idea behind this approach is to optimize a proper reflectance model by learning the parameters of the proposed neural reflectance model. In order to do this, new neural-based reflectance models are presented. The FNN mod el is able to generalize the diffuse term, while the RBF model is able to g eneralize the specular term. A hybrid structure of FNN-based and RBF-based models is also presented because most real surfaces are usually neither Lam bertian models nor ideally specular models. Experimental results, including synthetic and real images, are presented to demonstrate the performance of our approach given different specular effects, unknown illuminate conditio ns, and different noise environments.