Photometric stereo-based single time-of-flight camera

We present a method to enhance depth quality of a time-of-flight (ToF) camera without additional devices or hardware modifications. By controlling the turn-off patterns of the LEDs of the camera, we obtain depth and normal maps simultaneously. Sixteen subphase images are acquired with variations in gate-pulse timing and light emission pattern of the camera. The subphase images allow us to obtain a normal map, which are combined with depth maps for improved depth details. These details typically cannot be captured by conventional ToF cameras. By the proposed method, the average of absolute differences between the measured and laser-scanned depth maps has decreased from 4.57 to 3.77 mm.