In outdoor environments, light reflected from object surfaces is commonly scattered due to the impurities of the aerosol, or the presence of atmospheric phenomena such as fog and haze. Aside from scattering, the absorption coefficient presents another important factor that attenuates the reflected light of distant objects reaching the camera lens. As a result, images taken in bad weather conditions (or similarly, underwater and aerial photographs) are characterized by poor contrast, lower saturation and additional noise.

In this paper we present a novel method for 3D structure acquisition, based on structured light. Unlike classical structured light methods, in which a static projector illuminates a scene with time-varying illumination patterns, our technique makes use of a moving projector emitting a static striped illumination pattern. This projector is translated at a constant velocity, in the direction of the projector's horizontal axis. Illuminating the object in this manner allows us to perform a per pixel analysis, in which we decompose the recorded illumination sequence into a corresponding set of frequency components. The dominant frequency in this set can be directly converted into a corresponding depth value. This per pixel analysis allows us to preserve sharp edges in the depth image. Unlike classical structured light methods, the quality of our results is not limited by projector or camera resolution, but is solely dependent on the temporal sampling density of the captured image sequence. Additional benefits include a significant robustness against common problems encountered with structured light methods, such as occlusions, specular reflections, subsurface scattering, interreflections, and to a certain extent projector defocus.

Abstract Many video sequences consist of a locally dynamic background containing moving foreground subjects. In this paper we propose a novel way of re‐displaying these sequences, by giving the user control over a virtual camera frame. Based on video mosaicing, we first compute a static high quality background panorama. After segmenting and removing the foreground subjects from the original video, the remaining elements are merged into a dynamic background panorama, which seamlessly extends the original video footage. We then re‐display this augmented video by warping and cropping the panorama. The virtual camera can have an enlarged field‐of‐view and a controlled camera motion. Our technique is able to process videos with complex camera motions, reconstructing high quality panoramas without parallax artefacts, visible seams or blurring, while retaining repetitive dynamic elements.