EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing
Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 474389, 11 pages
doi:10.1155/2010/474389
Research Article

Efficient and Low-Cost 3D Structured Light System Based on a Modified Number-Theoretic Approach

Tomislav Pribanić,1 Hrvoje Džapo,1 and Joaquim Salvi2

1Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Unska 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
2Institute of Informatics and Applications, University of Girona, Avenue Lluis Santalo s/n, 17071 Girona, Spain

Received 8 May 2009; Revised 10 August 2009; Accepted 24 October 2009

Academic Editor: João Manuel R. S. Tavares

Copyright © 2010 Tomislav Pribanić et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

3D scanning based on structured light (SL) has been proven to be a powerful tool to measure the three-dimensional shape of surfaces, especially in biomechanics. We define a set of conditions that an optimal SL strategy should fulfill in the case of static scenes and then we present an efficient solution based on improving the number-theoretic approach (NTA). The proposal is compared to the well-known Gray code (GC) plus phase shift (PS) technique and the original NTA, all satisfying the same set of conditions but obtaining significant improvements with our implementation. The technique is validated in biomechanical applications such as the scanning of a footprint left on a “foam box” typically made for that purpose, where one of the ultimate goals could be the production of a shoe insole.