High-resolution real-time 360° 3D model reconstruction of a handheld object with fringe projection profilometry

The digitization of the complete shape of real objects has essential applications in fields of intelligent manufacturing, industrial detection, and reverse modeling. In order to build the full geometric models of rigid objects, the object must be moved relative to the measurement system (or the scanner must be moved relative to the object) to obtain and integrate views of the object from all sides, which not only complicates the system configuration but makes the whole process time-consuming. In this Letter, we present a high-resolution real-time 360° three-dimensional (3D) model reconstruction method that allows one to rotate an object manually and see a continuously updated 3D model during the scanning process. A multi-view fringe projection profilometry system acquires high-precision depth information about a handheld object from different perspectives and, meanwhile, the multiple views are aligned and merged together in real time. Our system employs stereo phase unwrapping and an adaptive depth constraint that can unwrap the phase of dense fringe images robustly without increasing the number of captured patterns. We then develop an efficient coarse-to-fine registration strategy to match the 3D surface segments rapidly. Our experiments demonstrate that our method can reconstruct the high-precision complete 3D model of complex objects under arbitrary rotation without any instrument assist and expensive pre/post-processing.