A technique for the reconstruction of cylindrical surfaces using optical images with an extension of least squares matching is presented. This technique is based on stereo-image acquisition of a cylindrical object, and it involves displacing the camera following the object length. The basic concept behind this technique is that variations in the camera viewpoint over a cylindrical object produce perspective effects similar to a conic section in an image sequence. Such parallax changes are continuous and can be modelled by a second-order function, which is combined with an adaptive least squares matching (ALSM) for the 3D object reconstruction. Using this concept, a photogrammetric intersection with only two image patches can be used to model a cylindrical object with high accuracy. Experiments were conducted with a cylinder on a panel with coded targets to assess the 3D reconstruction accuracy. The accuracy assessment was based on a comparison between the estimated diameter and the diameter directly measured over the cylinder. The difference between the diameters indicated an accuracy of 1/10 mm, and the cylindrical surface was entirely reconstructed.
Keywords: LSM; cylinder; geometric transformation; optical measurement; reconstruction.