Measurement of surface orientations of transparent objects by use of polarization in highlight

A method is proposed for obtaining surface orientations of transparent objects by use of polarization in highlight. Since the highlight, the specular component of light reflected from objects, is observed only near the specular direction, it reveals only limited parts of an object's surface. To obtain the orientations of the whole surface of an object, we employ a spherical extended light source. We report the experimental apparatus, a shape recovery algorithm, and a performance evaluation.