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Instability of the eikonal equation and shape from shading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2002

Ian Barnes and
Kewei Zhang
Ian Barnes
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia. (barnes@maths.mq.edu.au)
Kewei Zhang
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia. (kewei@maths.mq.edu.au)
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Abstract

In the shape from shading problem of computer vision oneattempts to recover the three-dimensional shape of an object orlandscape from the shading on a single image. Under theassumptions that the surface is dusty, distant, and illuminatedonly from above, the problem reduces to that of solving theeikonal equation |Du|=f on a domain in $\mathbb{R}^2$ . Despitevarious existence and uniqueness theorems for smooth solutions,we show that this problem is unstable, which is catastrophic forgeneral numerical algorithms.

Keywords

Eikonal equationshape from shadinginstabilitynumerical analysis.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
ESAIM: Mathematical Modelling and Numerical Analysis , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 2000, pp. 127 - 138
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, SMAI, 2000

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