A Survey of Methods for Volumetric Scene Reconstruction from Photographs

Scene reconstruction, the task of generating a 3D model of a scene given multiple 2D photographs taken of the scene, is an old and difficult problem in computer vision. Since its introduction, scene reconstruction has found application in many fields, including robotics, virtual reality, and entertainment. Volumetric models are a natural choice for scene reconstruction. Three broad classes of volumetric reconstruction techniques have been developed based on geometric intersections, color consistency, and pair-wise matching. Some of these techniques have spawned a number of variations and undergone considerable refinement. This paper is a survey of techniques for volumetric scene reconstruction.