Computer vision entails both passive and active illumination techniques. Whereas passive techniques observe the scene statically and analyse it as is, by contrast active techniques give the scene some actions and try to facilitate the analysis. In particular, active illumination techniques project specific light, for which the characteristics are known beforehand, to a target scene to enable stable and accurate analysis of the scene.
Notably, traditional passive techniques have a fundamental limitation: The external world surrounding us is three-dimensional; the image projected on a retina or an imaging device is two-dimensional (That is, reduction of one dimension has occurred). Active illumination techniques compensate for the dimensional reduction by actively controlling the illumination. The demand for reliable vision sensors is rapidly increasing in many application areas, such as robotics and medical image analysis. This book explains this new endeavour to explore the augmentation of reduced dimensions in computer vision.
This pivotal volume comprehensively examines basic optics concepts, available active-lighting techniques, and various application domains. Primarily aimed at advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates, the book also will serve as a useful guidebook for engineers from fields both in and beyond computer vision. Additionally, the book is suitable as course material for professional technical seminars.