E1 216 COMPUTER VISION

LECTURE 03: RADIOMETRY

Venu Madhav Govindu

Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

2023
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 Image Formation

In the previous lecture we looked at geometry of image formation

In this lecture we shall look at the effect of light
 Radiometry

Checkerboard Illusion
Wikipedia; Source for animation?
 Radiometry

Checkerboard Illusion
Wikipedia; Source for animation?
 Radiometry

Crater-Mound Illusion
• What do you see?
• And now?
• What happened?
• Strong assumption of lighting direction. Why?

https://earthsky.org/space/the-crater-dome-illusion
 Radiometry

Crater-Mound Illusion
• What do you see?
• And now?
• What happened?
• Strong assumption of lighting direction. Why?

https://earthsky.org/space/the-crater-dome-illusion
 Radiometry

Crater-Mound Illusion
• What do you see?
• And now?
• What happened?
• Strong assumption of lighting direction. Why?

https://earthsky.org/space/the-crater-dome-illusion
 Radiometry

Crater-Mound Illusion
• What do you see?
• And now?
• What happened?
• Strong assumption of lighting direction. Why?

https://earthsky.org/space/the-crater-dome-illusion
 Radiometry

The net effect on images depends on

• magnitude and location of light sources
• reflectance properties of surfaces/objects imaged
• relative geometric orientation of surfaces and light sources

The interaction between light and a surface can be quite complex

 Radiometry

Light striking a surface is

• absorbed
• reflected
• transmitted
• scattered

Usually, real surfaces behave in a combination of above effects

 Radiometry

A key concept in measuring light is radiance

Key Concept: Radiance

Power traveling at some point in a specific direction, per unit area
perpendicular to the direction of travel per unit solid angle

• Power (amount of energy per unit time): watts

• area: m2
• solid angle : steradian, i.e. radian2

Radiance is measured in units of watts × m−2 × steradian−1

 Radiometry

Key Concept: Foreshortening

• effect of distant source depends on relative orientation of surface
• as tilt increases, the source “looks smaller” from a surface point
• similarly with tilt, patch “looks smaller” from source
 Radiometry

dA cos θ
dω = dA0 =
r2

Solid Angle
• Analogous to angle in 2D
• Area subtended on unit sphere
• Total solid angle?
• Notice relationship to r. Why?
• Apparent size for observer
• Use spherical coordinates

Figure from notes of Ying Wu (North Western University)

 Radiometry

dA cos θ
dω = dA0 =
r2

Solid Angle
• Analogous to angle in 2D
• Area subtended on unit sphere
• Total solid angle? 4π Why?
• Notice relationship to r. Why?
• Apparent size for observer
• Use spherical coordinates

Figure from notes of Ying Wu (North Western University)

 Solid Angle

dl cos θ1
dφ =
r
dA cos θ
dω = (for infinitesimal dA)
r2

Why?
 Solid Angle

Homework
• This is not in our syllabus
• But you should work on it!
• Understand spherical coordinate systems.
Define (x, y, z) on a unit sphere in terms of angles (θ, φ)
• Derive the equivalent for infinitesimal 2D patch dxdy
• dω = sin θdθdφ Why?
 What do you observe?
• For the observer the angle subtended is the only visible aspect of the
object
• In 3D this is the solid angle
 Homework Exercises
• Relate dθ for a given dl as shown?
• What does the dependence on H tell us?
• Does it explain the size of objects on the horizon?
 Homework Exercises
• Relate dθ for a given dl as shown?
• What does the dependence on H tell us?
• Does it explain the size of objects on the horizon?
 Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function

The BRDF is the ratio of radiance in the outgoing direction to the incident
irradiance

Lo (P , θo , φo )
ρbd (θo , φo , θi , φi ) =
Li (P , θi , φi ) cos θi dω
Figure from Szeliski’s book
 Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function

The BRDF is the ratio of radiance in the outgoing direction to the incident
irradiance

• BRDF has units of inverse steradians

• varies between 0 and ∞
• BRDF of 0 : no light reflected in that direction
• BRDF of ∞ : unit radiance in exit direction from arbitrary small
radiance in incoming direction

Figure from Szeliski’s book

 Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function

Properties
• BRDF is symmetric in incoming and outgoing directions
• Helmholtz Reciprocity Principle
• BRDF’s are very hard to compute
• Special case - ideal diffuse surface
• Special case - specular or mirror-like surface
 Radiometry

BRDF is symmetric : ρbd (θo , φo , θi , φi ) = ρbd (θi , φi , θo , φo )

Further simplification : BRDF is independent of direction!

Lambertian Surfaces
• Ideal diffuse surfaces - called Lambertian surfaces
• Reflects light equally in all directions
• BRDF depends only on the point ρbd = πρ
• Model as “random” distribution of rough microscopic facets
• Very useful assumption in computer vision
• Assumption is seldom satisfied in the real world
 Radiometry

For a Lambertian surface with BRDF ρbd (θo , φo , θi , φi ) = ρ

Z
ρd = ρbd (θo , φo , θi , φi ) cos θo dωo
ZΩ
= ρ cos θo dωo
Ω
Z π
2
Z 2π
= ρ cos θo sin θo dθo dφo
0 0
= πρ

Albedo
• ρbrdf = ρπd where ρd is albedo
• Lambertian surface looks equally bright from all directions
• sin θo dθo dφo (spherical coordinates)
 Radiometry

For a Lambertian surface with BRDF ρbd (θo , φo , θi , φi ) = ρ

Z
ρd = ρbd (θo , φo , θi , φi ) cos θo dωo
ZΩ
= ρ cos θo dωo
Ω
Z π
2
Z 2π
= ρ cos θo sin θo dθo dφo
0 0
= πρ

Albedo
• ρbrdf = ρπd where ρd is albedo
• Lambertian surface looks equally bright from all directions
• sin θo dθo dφo (spherical coordinates)
 Radiometry

Point Sources
• Model as point source
• How does light propagate ?
• Effect of distance to source
• Drastic assumptions: Lambertian + point-source-at-∞
• Very effective!
Left: Adam Jones under CC-BY-SA-2.0
Right: https://twitter.com/Cihancansezgin/status/1480103306903146496
North Gallery, The Asclepion, Pergamon. Izmir, Turkey
 Specular Surfaces

• Specular from speculum Latin for mirror

• Mirror-like surfaces
• BRDF for an ideal specular surface has a specific form
• Most specular surfaces are not ideal
• Specular reflections form lobes of varying width
• Use the Phong model for specular lobes
• Has applications in graphics

Image taken from slides of S Narasimhan (CMU)

 Specular Surfaces

• Phong model determines shape of the lobe

• Radiance is proportional to cosn (δθ) = cosn (θ0 − θs )
• n is a variable parameter
• n is large ⇒ narrow lobe and small, sharp specularities
• n is large ⇒ broad lobe and large specularities with fuzzy boundaries

Right image taken from slides of S Narasimhan (CMU)