Kaleidoscopes have a great potential in computational photography as a
tool for redistributing light rays. In time-of-flight imaging the concept of the
kaleidoscope is also useful when dealing with the reconstruction of the geometry
that causes multiple reflections. This work is a step towards opening
new possibilities for the use of mirror systems as well as towards making
their use more practical. The focus of this work is the analysis of planar
kaleidoscope systems to enable their practical applicability in 3D imaging
tasks.
We analyse important practical properties of mirror systems and develop
a theoretical toolbox for dealing with planar kaleidoscopes. Based on this
theoretical toolbox we explore the use of planar kaleidoscopes for multiview
imaging and for the acquisition of 3D objects. The knowledge of the
mirrors positions is crucial for these multi-view applications. On the other
hand, the reconstruction of the geometry of a mirror room from time-offlight
measurements is also an important problem. We therefore employ the
developed tools for solving this problem using multiple observations of a
single scene point.