Rapid rendering of apparent contours of implicit surfaces for real-time tracking
Edward Rosten, Tom W. Drummond · 2003
This paper addresses the problem of real-time visual tracking of structures with curved surfaces by localising the apparent contour in each frame of an image sequence. A scheme is presented for rapidly rendering the apparent contour from a predicted pose. Errors between this contour and the observed contour are then used to update the pose estimate for tracking. The rendering algorithm makes use of two contributions. Firstly, a differential equation is derived which traces out the contour generators on an iso-surface of a scalar field. Secondly a set of rules for determining the visibility of each part of the apparent contour is presented. These techniques are used to render structures of moderate complexity in under 30ms which permits real-time tracking at video frame rate.