Shape From Polarization With Distant Lighting Estimation.

This article presents a new approach for surface normal recovery from polarization images under an unknown distant light. Polarization provides rich cues of object geometry and material, but it is also influenced by different lighting conditions. Different from previous Shape-from-Polarization (SfP) methods, which rely on handcrafted or data-driven priors, we analytically investigate the benefits of estimating distant lighting for resolving the ambiguity in normal estimation from SfP using the polarimetric Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (pBRDF) based image formation model.

Physics-Guided Reflection Separation From a Pair of Unpolarized and Polarized Images.

Undesirable reflections contained in photos taken in front of glass windows or doors often degrade visual quality of the image. Separating two layers apart benefits both human and machine perception. The polarization status of the light changes after refraction or reflection, providing more observations of the scene, which can benefit the reflection separation.