Reconstruction from image sequences by means of relative depths

This paper deals with the problem of reconstructing the locations of n points in space from m different images without camera calibration. It shows how these problems can be put into a similar theoretical framework. A new concept, the reduced fundamental matrix, is introduced. It contains just 4 parameters and can be used to predict locations of points in the images and to make reconstruction. We also introduce the concept of reduced fundamental tensor, which describes the relations between points in 3 images. It has 15 components and depends on 9 parameters. Necessary and sufficient conditions for a tensor to be a reduced fundamental tensor are derived. This framework can be generalised to a sequence of images. The dependencies between the different representations are investigated. Furthermore a canonical form of the camera matrices in a sequence are presented.