Structure from motion

Structure from motion (SfM) refers to the process of estimating three-dimensional structures from two-dimensional image sequences which may be coupled with local motion signals. It is studied in the fields of computer vision and visual perception. In biological vision, SfM refers to the phenomenon by which humans (and other animals) can recover 3-D structure from the projected 2D (retinal) motion field of a moving object or scene.

Obtaining 3D information from 2D images

Digital surface model of motorway interchange construction site

Real photo x SfM with texture color x SfM with simple shader. Made with Python Photogrammetry Toolbox GUI and rendered in Blender with Cycles.

Bezmiechowa airfield 3D Digital Surface Model extracted from data collected during 30min flight of Pteryx UAV

Humans perceive a lot of information about the three-dimensional structure in their environment by moving through it. When the observer moves and the objects around him move, information is obtained from images sensed over time.

Finding structure from motion presents a similar problem as finding structure from stereo vision. In both instances, the correspondence between images and the reconstruction of 3D object needs to be found.

To find correspondence between images, features such as corner points (edges with gradients in multiple directions) need to be tracked from one image to the next. The feature trajectories over time are then used to reconstruct their 3D positions and the camera's motion.

See also

• Kinetic depth effect
• Match moving
• Motion field
• Epipolar geometry
• Tomasi–Kanade factorization

Further reading

• Richard Hartley and Andrew Zisserman (2003). Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-54051-8. 

• Olivier Faugeras and Quang-Tuan Luong and Theodore Papadopoulo (2001). The Geometry of Multiple Images. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-06220-8. 
• Yi Ma, S. Shankar Sastry, Jana Kosecka, Stefano Soatto, Jana Kosecka (November 2003). An Invitation to 3-D Vision: From Images to Geometric Models. Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics Series, #26. Springer-Verlag New York, LLC. ISBN 0-387-00893-4. 

External links

Structure from Motion software toolboxes

1. 3DF Samantha, Uncalibrated structure from motion pipeline by 3Dflow
2. FIT3D (From Images to 3D) Toolbox by Isaac Esteban
3. Structure from Motion toolbox for Matlab by Vincent Rabaud
4. Automatic Camera Tracking System (ACTS): A structure-from-motion system for Microsoft Windows, by State Key Lab of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University.
5. Matlab Functions for Multiple View Geometry by Andrew Zissermann
6. Structure and Motion Toolkit by Phil Torr
7. Non Rigid Structure from Motion in trajectory space by Ijaz Akhter.
8. Matlab Code for Non-Rigid Structure from Motion by Lorenzo Torresani
9. Bundler - Structure from Motion for Unordered Photo Collections by Noah Snavely
10. Voodoo Camera Tracker: A tool for the integration of virtual and real scenes, by Laboratorium für Informationstechnologie, University of Hannover
11. Libmv - A C++ Structure from Motion library
12. VisualSFM - A Visual Structure from Motion System
13. SFMToolkit a complete photogrammetry solution based on open-source software.
14. MicMac, a SFM open-source code released by the Institut Géographique National (FR)
15. Python Photogrammetry Toolbox GUI, a SFM open-source code released by Pierre Moulon and Arc-Team