This paper proposes an efficient method to capture and augment highly elastic
objects from a single view. 3D shape recovery from a monocular video sequence
is an underconstrained problem and many approaches have been proposed to
enforce constraints and re-solve the ambiguities. State-of-the art solutions
enforce smoothness or geometric constraints, consider specific deformation
properties such as inextensibility or ressort to shading constraints.
However, few of them can handle properly large elastic deformations. We
propose in this paper a real-time method which makes use of a mechanical
model and is able to handle highly elastic objects. Our method is formulated
as a energy minimization problem accounting for a non-linear elastic model
constrained by external image points acquired from a monocular camera. This
method prevents us from formulating restrictive assumptions and specific
constraint terms in the minimization. The only parameter involved in the
method is the Young’s modulus but we show in experiments that a rough
estimate of the Young’s modulus is sufficient to obtain a good
reconstruction. Our method is compared to existing techniques with
experiments conducted on computer-generated and real data that show the
effectiveness of our approach. Experiments in the context of minimally
invasive liver surgery are also provided.