Hand-held 3D scanning based on coarse and fine registration of multiple range images

A hand-held 3D scanning technique is proposed to reconstruct 3D models of real objects. A sequence of range images captured from a hand-held stereo camera is automatically registered to a reference coordinate system. The automated scanning process consists of two states, coarse and fine registration. At the beginning, scanning process starts at the fine registration state. A fast and accurate registration refinement technique is used to align range images in a pair-wise manner. If the refinement technique fails, the process changes to the coarse registration state. A feature-based coarse registration technique is proposed to find correspondences between the last successful frame and the current frame. If the coarse registration successes, the process returns to the fine registration state again. A fast point-to-plane refinement technique is employed to do shape-based registration. After the shape-based alignment, a texture-based refinement technique matches texture features to enhance visual appearance of the reconstructed models. Through a graphic and video display, a human operator adjusts the pose of the camera to change the view of the next acquisition. Experimental results show that 3D models of real objects are reconstructed from sequences of range images.