Understanding Image Intrinsics Through Light and Heat

Abstract: This talk examines the physical interplay between light and heat: what is absent in the visible image--light not reflected by the scene--is absorbed as heat and manifests in the thermal spectrum. This process intrinsically couples illumination, material properties, and heat transport. By exploiting this coupling, a single visible-thermal image pair provides complementary information that enables the decomposition of photometric image intrinsics, namely incident illumination (shading) and surface reflectance (albedo). More broadly, modeling the flow of energy across light and heat transport opens new opportunities for vision, imaging, and inverse graphics. Committee: Prof. Srinivasa G. Narasimhan (advisor) Prof. Aswin C. Sankaranarayanan (advisor) Prof. Matthew P. O'Toole Sriram N. Narayanan