3D shape recovery algorithm from image orientations of textured surfaces

Previous psychophysical studies have demonstrated that the image orientation of textured surfaces guides human 3D shape perception. However, the accuracy of computational 3D shape reconstruction solely from image orientation requires further study. This paper proposes a 3D shape recovery algorithm from the image orientation of a single textured surface image. The evaluation of the proposed algorithm uses computer-generated textured complex 3D surfaces. The depth correlations between the recovered and true surface shapes achieved or exceeded 0.8, which is similar to the accuracy of human shape perception, as shown in a previous psychophysical study, indicating that the image orientations contain adequate information for 3D shape recovery from textured surface images.