This paper presents an approach to treat the imag- ing of objects with arbitrary reflection diagrams. We consider here the observation of retroreflective objects through a light scattering medium. Their images formed by an active vision system show a number of surprises. First, a retroreflector may be perceived as several different objects. Its image, under uniform illumination and invariable reflec- tive characteristics, can be highly-nonuniform in brightness, etc. Second, a retroreflector with very low albedo viewed against an ideally-white back- ground may be seen as a clearer object than the background. These features should be accounted for when analyzing the imaging of objects with reflection patterns differing greatly from that of Lambertian ones.

Date Published: 1 September 1996
PDF: 2 pages
Proc. SPIE 2778, 17th Congress of the International Commission for Optics: Optics for Science and New Technology, 27781L (1 September 1996); doi: 10.1117/12.2298939

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2778:
17th Congress of the International Commission for Optics: Optics for Science and New Technology
Joon-Sung Chang; Jai-Hyung Lee; ChangHee Nam, Editor(s)