Acquiring bump maps from curved objects

A system for acquiring an image of small scale surface features of an object, comprising:

• an imaging system for successively illuminating the object with one of N light sources and, for each light source, for obtaining a grey scale image of the object that is registered with the other grey scale images;
• and
• a data processor having an input coupled to an output of the imaging system for processing the grey scale images such that for each corresponding pixel only N-X pixels are retained;
• for forming N-X processed images having, for each image pixel, a computed surface normal;
• for spatially filtering the N-X processed images to form N-X spatially filtered images of the processed images;
• for transforming, using the N-X spatially filtered images, the surface normals of the processed images to form a set of N-X planar surface images;
• and for generating from the set of N-X planar surface images a set of N-X final images having surface normals that represent the small scale surface features of the object that are substantially independent of object curvature.

A method for obtaining and processing acquired images of an object to extract a small scale geometry of the object, comprising steps of:

• operating N (where N>3) light sources and an image input device placed at a distance from the object such that different regions of the object are illuminated by each of the multiple light sources;
• obtaining multiple images of the object, one for each of the light sources with the other light sources turned off;
• processing the images to derive three images, each corresponding to a component of surface normals of the object relative to directions to three of the light sources;
• removing an effect of large scale surface shape from the derived images of the surface normals by computing low spatial frequency images from the derived images;
• for a section or sections of the images for which the small scale geometry is to be acquired, determining transformations from the surface normals represented by the low spatial frequency images to the normals of a planar surface;
• applying the transformations to the derived surface normal images to obtain the normals of the small scale surface variations applied to a flat plane;
• adjusting a spacing of the values for the normals to account for foreshortening due to curvature by expanding the distances using directional derivatives computed from the surface normals at each point in the image;
• and
• obtaining regularly spaced images of new surface normals by sampling the spatially adjusted images onto a new, regularly spaced image;
• whereby there is extracted the small scale geometry of the object that is substantially independent of the object's curvature.