Suppressing blooming interference in structured light systems by adaptively reducing camera oversaturated energy

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Computer Vision
• Metrology

Background:

• Structured light systems are crucial for 3D object scanning.
• Blooming, caused by light over-saturation, significantly degrades fringe pattern quality when scanning reflective surfaces like metals.
• Existing methods like High Dynamic Range (HDR) and adaptive projection fail to reliably mitigate blooming interference.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel method for effectively suppressing blooming interference in structured light 3D scanning of metal objects.
• To improve the accuracy and reliability of 3D reconstruction in the presence of challenging surface reflectivity.

Main Methods:

• A new technique is proposed that adaptively suppresses oversaturated areas by adjusting exposure time.
• Multi-exposure time fringe patterns are captured and decoded.
• A decoding inheritance method is employed to fuse the results from different exposure times.

Main Results:

• The proposed method demonstrates superior performance in suppressing blooming compared to conventional approaches.
• Experimental validation confirms significant reduction in fringe interference caused by blooming.
• Enhanced quality of decoded fringe patterns for improved 3D reconstruction.

Conclusions:

• The adaptive suppression and multi-exposure fusion method effectively overcomes blooming limitations in structured light scanning.
• This technique offers a more robust solution for 3D scanning of challenging metallic surfaces.
• The findings pave the way for more accurate and reliable 3D metrology applications.