“Scanning from Heating” and “Shape from Fluorescence”

3D surface acquisition is a subject which has been studied to a large extent. A significant number of techniques for acquiring shape have been proposed, and a wide range of commercial solutions are available. Nevertheless, today’s systems still have difficulties when digitizing objects with non-Lambertian surfaces in the visible light spectrum, as is the case of transparent, semi-transparent or highly reflective materials (e.g. glass, crystals, some plastics and shiny metals). In this chapter, some of the issues of traditional scanning systems are addressed by considering various approaches using the radioactive properties of materials, the polarization information of the reflected light as…