Shape Reconstruction from Apparent Contours. Theory and Algorithms

Motivated by a variational model concerning the depth of the objects in a picture and the problem of illusory contours, this book investigates one of the central problems of computer vision: the topological and algorithmical reconstruction of a smooth three dimensional scene starting from the visible part of an apparent contour. The authors focus their attention on the manipulation of apparent contours using a finite set of elementary moves, which correspond to consider diffeomorphic three dimensional scenes. A large part of the book is devoted to the algorithmic part, with implementations, experiments, and computed examples. The book is intended also as a user's guide to the software code appcontour, written for the manipulation of apparent contours and their invariants.