Colorization of 3D geometric model utilizing laser reflectivity

In this paper, we propose a new technique for adding color to a surface of a 3D geometrical model utilizing laser reflectivity. A time-of-flight laser scanner obtains a range image from the sensor toward the target by measuring the round-trip time of a laser pulse. At the same time, for most laser scanners, the reflectance image (which is the strength of the reflected light) is available as a by-product of the range value. The proposed technique first assigns appearance information to a 3D model by colorizing a reflectance image based on the similarity of color and reflectance images. Then the color information is transfered to the corresponding range image, and the colorized 3D model is obtained. We carried out experiments using a laser scanner and showed the performance of the proposed technique in several conditions.