This paper presents a shape-from-focus method, which is improved with regard to the mathematical operator used for contrast measurement, the selection of the neighborhood size, surface refinement through interpolation, and surface postprocessing. Three-dimensional models of living human faces are presented with such a high resolution that single hairs are visible.

Hologram tomography is a two-step method for three-dimensional topometry of extended objects. The first step consists of the hologram recording with a single laser pulse of 35 ns duration and storage in a photosensitive material. In the second step the hologram is optically reconstructed and digitized, which leads to a set of two-dimensional projections at different axial positions. A maximization of a focus measure has to be performed to extract the surface position out of the projections. Unlike with well-established methods, where the comparison of sharpness values is done parallel to the optical axis, we propose an iterative solution to perform the maximization along the direction of image formation, which is evaluated for each surface point individually. This leads to a better reproducibility of the surface in the off-axis regions.

Digital sensors and fast digital image processing facilitate the use of pulsed holography for 3D surface measurement of moving objects. The real image of a hologram is reconstructed optically. A sequence of high-resolution projection images of the real image with a varying distance to the hologram is recorded digitally. Focus detection in this image sequence by digital image processing yields the shape of the recorded object. The image intensity serves as a precise pixel-matching texture. An application of this concept is the generation of a textured 3D computer model of a facial surface from a portrait hologram.

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