Abstract
We present a novel time-resolved light transport decomposition method using thermal imaging. Because the speed
of heat propagation is much slower than the speed of light
propagation, transient transport of far infrared light can be
observed at a video frame rate. A key observation is that
the thermal image looks similar to the visible light image in
an appropriately controlled environment. This implies that
conventional computer vision techniques can be straightforwardly applied to the thermal image. We show that the diffuse component in the thermal image can be separated and,
therefore, the surface normals of objects can be estimated
by the Lambertian photometric stereo. The effectiveness of
our method is evaluated by conducting real-world experiments, and its applicability to black body, transparent, and
translucent objects is shown.