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Diffuse Reflectance

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Computer Vision

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Synonyms

Diffuse shading; Diffusely scattered reflectance; Lambertian reflectance

Related Concepts

Definition

Diffuse reflection is a qualitative term to describe the relative, low-pass responses of different materials to incident illumination.

Background

Diffuse reflection can be described in relation to its opposite, specular (i.e., mirror) reflection. While an object with specular reflection allows direct measurement of the light that strikes the surface of the object, diffuse reflection destroys (i.e., “blurs”) the illumination information. Without scene priors, it is generally impossible to accurately recover the incident illumination on a diffuse scene from measured intensities, even if the surface geometry, viewing direction, and object BRDF are known. A large class of materials can be described by diffuse reflectance models which, although usually low parametric, are diverse in nature and do not follow any fixed analytic form.

Theory

Ramamoorthi et al. [1...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Dr. Sanjeev J. Koppal

Authors
  1. Dr. Sanjeev J. Koppal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sanjeev J. Koppal .

Section Editor information

  1. No affiliation provided

    Todd Zickler

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Koppal, S.J. (2021). Diffuse Reflectance. In: Computer Vision. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03243-2_533-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03243-2_533-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03243-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03243-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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