Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Reconstruction des mésons D'

LHCb est une expérience dédiée à l'étude de la violation CP dans le système des mésons B et à l'étude de leurs désintégrations rares. En 2000, la collaboration a décidé de modifier son appareillage pour minimiser la matière rencontrée par les particules et optimiser le système de déclenchement. C'est dans ce contexte que se place cette thèse qui comprend trois parties. La première est relative à l'identification des électrons qui est principalement basée sur l'information fournie par le système des calorimètres mais tire aussi profit des mesures du RICH et du détecteurs à muons. L'efficacité d'identification des électrons est environ 95% avec un taux d'identification de pions comme électrons égal à 0. 8% et une pureté de l'échantillon d'électrons de 65%. Dans la première partie est aussi présentée la reconstruction des photons Bremsstrahlung, qui permet une sélection du J/PSI se désintégrant en paire e+e- et ainsi celle du canal B°d →J/psi (ee)K°s. La deuxième partie décrit la sélection de ce canal qui consiste en un ensemble de coupures cinématiques et topologiques. L'efficacité totale de sélection est 0. 176% correspondant à 28000 événements reconstruits par an, avec un rapport B /S, pour le fond bb inclusif, comprit dans l'intervalle à 90% de niveau de confiance [0. 017 ; 0. 069]. Enfin, dans la dernière partie sont présentées les méthodes d'étiquetage de la saveur des mésons B. L'ajout de l'information fournie par le détecteur de vertex permet de rejeter les électrons issus de conversion de photon et ainsi d'améliorer sensiblement les performances. Ces performances ont ensuite été utilisées pour déterminer la sensibilité de l'expérience LHCb à la mesure de sin(2β). L'erreur statistique attendue sur sin(2β) après un an de prise de données correspondant à une luminosité intégrée de 2 fb-1 et une section efficace de production des paires bb̄ de 0. 5 mb, varie de 0. 015 à 0. 020 en fonction des paramètres sin(2β) et ILambda fI et du niveau de bruit de fond
LHCb experiment bas been designed in order to do precise measurements of CP violation and rare decays with B mesons. In 2000, the collaboration decided to modify f the spectrometer in order to minimize the amount of matter seen by particles and to optimize the trigger. This thesis was clone in this context and is divided in three parts. First is relative to the electron identification and to the recovery of Bremsstrahlung photons emitted by electrons when they pass through matter. Electron identification is mainly based on information 1 provided by calorimeter system but also uses RICH and muon system. A method based on reference histograms had been developed which combine information provided by these detectors. Electron identification efficiency, for electrons in ECAL acceptance is 95% and the pion misidentification rate 0. 8% with a 65% purity of electron sample. Bremsstrahlung recovery allows the select ion of J/psi decaying in e+e- pair and of B°d → J/psi (e e)K° channel which are described in the second part. The select ion of this channel were developed in order to get an acceptable selection efficiency with a good rejection of background. A set of kinematic and topologic cuts were designed and total select ion efficiency is 0. 176%, corresponding to 28000 untagged events reconstructed by year, with a ratio B/S E [0. 017 ; 0. 0691] (at 90% of confidence level) for inclusive bb background. Ln the third part, B meson flavour tagging is presented. The addition of information provided by the vertex locator allows to reject electron coming from conversion and to improve slightly the performances. The LHCb sensibility to sin(2β) from B°d → J/psi K° decay is also determined. Statistical error, expected after one year of data taking, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2 fb-1 and bb̄ pair cross section of 0. 5 mb, vary from 0. 015 to 0. 020 according to the values of sin(2β), lLambda fl and B/S

CBM, une des expériences majeures du nouvel accélérateur FAIR en cours de construction au GSI (Darmstadt), a pour objectif d'explorer le diagramme des phases de la matière nucléaire dans la région des hautes densités baryoniques nettes. Un de ses principaux thèmes de physique est l'étude de la production des particules à charme ouvert dans les collisions d'ions lourds. La mesure directe de ces particules nécessite l'utilisation d'un détecteur de vertex très précis. La présente thèse est une contribution à la conception et au développement de ce détecteur, appelé MVD. Une première partie de la thèse concerne l'évaluation, à l'aide de simulations réalistes, des flots de données à transmettre par les capteurs qui équiperont la première génération du MVD. Les résultats obtenus montrent que les performances attendues des capteurs permettront de mener à bien le programme de physique de CBM. Une deuxième partie porte sur les performances attendues pour la reconstruction des particules à charme ouvert, à travers leur désintégration hadronique, dans les collisions Au+Au. Des simulations détaillées ont permis de démontrer que la reconstruction du méson D+ → π+ π+ K-, par exemple, est faisable avec une efficacité de reconstruction de 2% et un rapport signal/bruit de 1.5. La statistique attendue en deux mois de prises de données a été évaluée à environ 6.9 x 104 mésons D. Dans la dernière partie, il a été montré que cette statistique permettrait d'effectuer des études détaillées du flot elliptique intégré des mésons D. La mesure du flot elliptique différentiel de ces particules requerrait, cependant, des statistiques plus élevées, et donc l'utilisation de capteurs plus performants.

A representação de Fock-Tani é um formalismo de teoria de campos apropriado para o tratamento simultâneo de partículas compostas e seus constituintes. O modelo 3P0 é um típico modelo de decaimento que considera somente decaimentos fortes do tipo OZI-permitidos. O modelo considera um par quark-antiquark criado com os números quânticos do vácuo na presença do méson do estado inicial. Ele é descrito pelo limite não relativístico do Hamiltoniano de criação de par. Aplicando a transformação de Fock-Tani ao Hamiltoniano microscópico de criação de par produz-se a expansão caraterística em potências da função de onda, onde o modelo 3P0 ´e a ordem mais baixa desta expansão. O modelo 3P0 corrigido (C3P0) é obtido em mais altas ordens nesta expansão, pela introdução do kernel de estado ligado ¢, chamado de correção de estado ligado. O objetivo deste trabalho é estudar em detalhe o setor de mésons charmosos (mésons D) e o setor de mésons charmosos-estranhos (mésons DSJ ) usando o modelo C3P0, onde o modelo C3P0 é expandido com a inclusão da segunda ordem da correção de estado ligado pelo método diagramático. Em particular, obtemos as amplitudes e taxas de decaimento dos seguintes canais: Setor charmoso e Setor charmoso-estranho.
The Fock-Tani representation is a field theory formalism appropriated for the simultaneous treatment of composite particles and their constituents. The 3P0 model is a typical decay model which considers only OZI-allowed strong decays. The model considers a quark-antiquark pair created with the vacuum quantum numbers in the presence of the initial state meson. It is described as the non-relativistic limit of the pair creation Hamiltonian. Applying the Fock-Tani transformation to the microscopic Hamiltonian of the pair creation produces the characteristic expansion in powers of the wave function, where the 3P0 model is the lowest order in the expansion. The corrected 3P0 model (C3P0) is obtained from higher orders in the expansion, by the introduction of the bound state kernel ¢, called the bound state correction. The goal of this work is to study in detail the charmed meson sector (D meson) and the strange charmed meson sector (DSJ meson) using the C3P0 model, where the C3P0 model is expanded by the inclusion of the second order of the bound state correction for the diagramatic method. In particular, we shall calculate the decay amplitudes and decay rates of the following channels: Charmed sector and Strange charmed sector.

L'expérience Graal est consacrée à la spectroscopie nucléonique via la photo-production des mésons et en particulier à la mesure des observables de polarisation, qui donne des informations plus claires sur les contributions résonnantes aux états excités du nucléon. L'ensemble expérimentale est composé d'un faisceau Compton d'énergie entre 0.5 et 1.5 GeV, produit par rétro-diffusion d'un faisceau laser d'Argon sur les électrons de 6 GeV de l'anneau de stockage de l'ESRF, situé à Grenoble (France). Le programme de reconstruction des traces d'un détecteur composé de deux chambres cylindriques à multifils a été optimisé pour la mesure des canaux de réaction avec trois particules chargées dans l'état final. La résolution spatiale et l'efficacité de ce détecteur ont été estimées et testées avec la photo-production de eta et omega sur le proton et avec la décroissance chargée du méson en trois pions. L'asymétrie faisceau Sigma, obtenue avec une polarisation linéaire des photons, a été mesurée pour la première fois dans la réaction gamma+p -> K+Lambda du seuil jusqu'à 1.5 GeV pour l'énergie du photon dans le repère du laboratoire. Cette observable peut en effet être plus sensible, par rapport à la section efficace, à certaines contributions résonnantes. La comparaison de l'asymétrie faisceau avec un nouveau modèle isobarique, qui a été étendu jusqu'aux énergies de 2.5 GeV dans le système du centre de masse, a montré que cette observable est plus sensible aux résonances nucléoniques qu'à celles hypéroniques.

LHCb est une expérience dédiée à l'étude de la violation CP dans le domaine des mésons B et de leurs désintégrations rares. Lors du démarrage du LHC, une des premières actions sera de vérifier que l'appareillage a les performances attendues. Cette thèse se place dans le contexte des premières mesures de l'expérience LHCb pour deux des sujets traités : la reconstruction des photons par le calorimètre électromagnétique de LHCb dans différentes situations expérimentales et la calibration du calorimètre. Dans ce but une identification des photons à partir de l'ensemble des informations du SPD, PS, ECAL et HCAL est développée basée sur une méthode discriminante de Fisher. Ces photons reconstruits sont utilisés dans la reconstruction des π° dont les spectres mesureront dès le début des prises de données Ie niveau de calibration du calorimètre. Pour calibrer chaque cellule du calorimètre électromagnétique la contrainte sur la masse des π° reconstruits est utilisée. Une calibration à 1 % est possible pour une dé-calibration allant jusqu'à 30% en une dizaine d'heures de prise de données à la luminosité nominale. Deux canaux de physique, où la calibration du calorimètre et la reconstruction de mésons neutres se désintégrant en paire de photons sont Ies points clefs, sont étudiés. Le canal Bd° → J/Ψπ° mesure de I'angle βeff du triangle CKM, les graphes qui y contribuent peuvent être sensibles à de la physique au delà du Modèle Standard. Le canal Bs° → J/ψη mesure I'angle βs, domaine spécifique de LHCb. La sensibilité de LHCb pour la mesure de χ dans ce canal est estimée
LHCb has been designed in order to perform precise measurements of CP violation and rare decays with B mesons. At the LHC start-up, one of the first tasks will be to check the expected apparatus performances. This thesis looks to the first recorded data by the LHCb experiment for two of the subjects developed : the photon reconstruction in the electromagnetic calorimeter assuming different experimental situations, and the calibration of the calorimeter. A photon identification tool is developed based on a Fisher discriminant method using information from all the calorimeter sub-detectors (SPD, PS, ECAL, and HCAL). The reconstructed photons are used for π° mass reconstruction parameters, able to evaluate the overall calibration level. For individual cell calibration, the constraint from the reconstructed π° mass is used. A 1 % calibration can be achieved even starting from a 30 % spread cell to cell calibration within a few tenth hours at the LHCb nomina luminosity. Two physics channels, for which the calorimeter calibration and neutral mesons decaying into photon pair reconstruction are key points, are studied. The channel Bd° → J/Ψπ° to measure βeff angle, where unexpected contributions beyond the standard model may occur and the channel Bs° → J/ψη measures the βs angle has been studied

The microscopic observation of thin sections of anatomical tissue provides knowledge about its molecular and cellular constituents, which is crucial in identifying pathologies, understanding the structure and function of internal organs and for the construction of anatomical atlases. The digitization of these sections yields two dimensional (2-D) images which provide rich anatomical and functional detail at both microscopic and macroscopic level. While the spatial resolution, contrast and specificity of these images continue to outperform the classic three dimensional (3-D) imaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging, their quality and, crucially, quantitative analysis is still limited. The reason is that the organs or anatomical structures of interest are inherently 3-D objects and the analysis of their shape, the computation of their volume, or the comparison of their characteristics across individuals cannot be accurately performed on the basis of 2-D sections alone. Therefore, 3-D volume reconstruction from 2-D histological images usually constitutes a first step in the morphological analysis of the structures imaged by histology. Yet, the loss of 3-D spatial alignment together with the numerous artefacts occurring in the 2-D image acquisition process make reconstruction a difficult task. The work presented in this thesis is based on the observation that the quality of reconstructed histological volumes is usually assessed by considering the smoothness of some reconstructed structures of interest. Our research has two novel contributions: (1) two 3-D reconstruction methods for 2-D histological images which use smoothness as a means to drive the reconstruction process itself; (2) a quantitative measure of smoothness to assess the quality of reconstructed volumes. We apply the reconstruction techniques to various datasets of both synthetic and real histological images. The qualitative visual inspection of the reconstructed volumes is complemented with the quantitative measurements of smoothness with excellent agreement. We also perform a robustness analysis of the proposed reconstruction methods where we evaluate their behaviour in the presence of a variety of geometrical perturbations and typical histological artefacts.gg

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
Apresentamos um estudo preliminar da produção difrativa de mésons utilizando dados obtidos da colisão próton-próton, a energias de centro de massa de 7 TeV, com o experimento CMS-LHC. O trabalho inclui o desenvolvimento do algoritmo de reconstrução dos mésons D* através do canal de decaimento D*->D0 + pion (lento) ->K+pion, a medida da eficiência de detecção e reconstrução, e uma análise do comportamento de variáveis cinemáticas na produção difrativa dessas partículas, particularmente, das lacunas de rapidez. Para isso, foi utilizada uma luminosidade integrada de 3,171pb^(-1) de dados coletados no ano de 2010. As análises com os dados experimentais foram comparadas com os resultados obtidos com geradores de Monte Carlo PYTHIA6, PYTHIA8 e POMPYT.
In this work we present a very preliminary study of the diffractive production of mesons D* from proton-proton collisions, at center of mass energy of 7 TeV, with the CMS-LHC experiment. The decay channel where D*->D0 + pion (slow) ->K+pion was reconstructed and the efficiency was computed. An analysis of the dependence of the kinematical variables,particularly of the pseudo rapidity gap Δη, on the meson production was done. A total luminosity of 3.171pb^(-1) of data collected in the year of 2010 was analyzed, and the reconstructed data were compared to the ones obtained with PYTHIA6, PYTHIA8 and POMPYT generators.

This thesis deals with the problem of three dimensional scene reconstruction from multiple camera images. This is a well established problem in computer vision and has been significantly researched. In recent years some excellent results have been achieved, however existing algorithms often fall short of many biological systems in terms of robustness and generality. The aim of this research was to develop improved algorithms for reconstructing 3D scenes, with a focus on accurate system modelling and correctly dealing with occlusions. With scene reconstruction the objective is to infer scene parameters describing the 3D structure of the scene from the data given by camera images. This is an illposed inverse problem, where an exact solution cannot be guaranteed. The use of a statistical approach to deal with the scene reconstruction problem is introduced and the differences between maximum a priori (MAP) and minimum mean square estimate (MMSE) considered. It is discussed how traditional stereo matching can be performed using a volumetric scene model. An improved model describing the relationship between the camera data and a discrete model of the scene is presented. This highlights some of the common causes of modelling errors, enabling them to be dealt with objectively. The problems posed by occlusions are considered. Using a greedy algorithm the scene is progressively reconstructed to account for visibility interactions between regions and the idea of a complete scene estimate is established. Some simple and improved techniques for reliably assigning opaque voxels are developed, making use of prior information. Problems with variations in the imaging convolution kernel between images motivate the development of a pixel dissimilarity measure. Belief propagation is then applied to better utilise prior information and obtain an improved global optimum. A new volumetric factor graph model is presented which represents the joint probability distribution of the scene and imaging system. By utilising the structure of the local compatibility functions, an efficient procedure for updating the messages is detailed. To help convergence, a novel approach of accentuating beliefs is shown. Results demonstrate the validity of this approach, however the reconstruction error is similar or slightly higher than from the Greedy algorithm. To simplify the volumetric model, a new approach to belief propagation is demonstrated by applying it to a dynamic model. This approach is developed as an alternative to the full volumetric model because it is less memory and computationally intensive. Using a factor graph, a volumetric known visibility model is presented which ensures the scene is complete with respect to all the camera images. Dynamic updating is also applied to a simpler single depth-map model. Results show this approach is unsuitable for the volumetric known visibility model, however, improved results are obtained with the simple depth-map model.

This thesis investigates interactive scene reconstruction and understanding using RGB-D data only. Indeed, we believe that depth cameras will still be in the near future a cheap and low-power 3D sensing alternative suitable for mobile devices too. Therefore, our contributions build on top of state-of-the-art approaches to achieve advances in three main challenging scenarios, namely mobile mapping, large scale surface reconstruction and semantic modeling. First, we will describe an effective approach dealing with Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) on platforms with limited resources, such as a tablet device. Unlike previous methods, dense reconstruction is achieved by reprojection of RGB-D frames, while local consistency is maintained by deploying relative bundle adjustment principles. We will show quantitative results comparing our technique to the state-of-the-art as well as detailed reconstruction of various environments ranging from rooms to small apartments. Then, we will address large scale surface modeling from depth maps exploiting parallel GPU computing. We will develop a real-time camera tracking method based on the popular KinectFusion system and an online surface alignment technique capable of counteracting drift errors and closing small loops. We will show very high quality meshes outperforming existing methods on publicly available datasets as well as on data recorded with our RGB-D camera even in complete darkness. Finally, we will move to our Semantic Bundle Adjustment framework to effectively combine object detection and SLAM in a unified system. Though the mathematical framework we will describe does not restrict to a particular sensing technology, in the experimental section we will refer, again, only to RGB-D sensing. We will discuss successful implementations of our algorithm showing the benefit of a joint object detection, camera tracking and environment mapping.

This thesis describes a novel procedure for achieving full 3D reconstruction from multiple RGB-D cameras configured such that the amount of overlap between views is low. Overlap is used to describe the portion of a scene that is common in a pair of views, and is considered low when at most 50% of the scene is common. Compatible systems are configured such that interpreting cameras as nodes and overlap as edges, a connected undirected graph can be constructed. The fundamental goal of the proposed procedure is to calibrate a given system of cameras. Calibration is the process of finding the transformation from each camera's point of view to the reconstructed scenes global coordinate system. The procedure focuses on maintaing the accuracy of reconstruction once the system is calibrated.par RGB-D cameras gained popularity from their ability to generate dense 3D images; however, individually these cameras can not provide full 3D images because of factors like occlusions from and a limited field of view. In order to successfully combine views there must exist common features that can be matched or prior heuristics pertaining to the environment that can be used to infer alignment. Intuitively, corresponding features exist in overlapping regions of views. Combining data from pairs of overlapping views would provide a more full 3D reconstructed scene. A calibrated system of cameras is susceptible to misalignment. Re-calibration of the entire system is expensive, and is unnecessary if only a small number of cameras became misaligned. Correcting misalignment is a much more practical approach for maintaing calibration accuracy over extended periods of time. par The presented procedure begins by identifying the necessary overlapping pairs of cameras for calibration. These pairs form a spanning tree in which overlap is maximized; this tree is referred to as the alignment tree. Each pair is aligned by a two-phase procedure that transforms the data from the coordinate system of the camera at a lower level in the alignment tree to that of the higher. The transformation between each pair is catalogued and used to reconstruction of incoming frames from the cameras. Once calibrated, cameras are assumed to be independent and their successive frames are compared to detect motion. The catalogued transformations are updated on instances that motion is detected essentially correcting misalignment. \par At the end of the calibration process the reconstructed scene generated from the combined data would contain relative alignment accuracy throughout all regions. Using this proposed algorithm reconstruction accuracy of over 90% was achieved for systems calibrated with the angle between the cameras 45 degrees or more. Once calibrated the cameras can observe and reconstruct a scene on every frame. This is reliant on the assumption that the cameras will be fixed; however, in a practical sense this cannot be guaranteed. Systems maintained over 90% reconstruction accuracy during operation with induced misalignment. This procedure also maintained the reconstruction accuracy from calibration during execution for up to an hour. The fundamental contribution of this work is the novel concept of using overlap as a means of expressing how a group of cameras are connected. Building a spanning tree representation of the given system of cameras provides a useful structure for uniquely expressing the relationship between the cameras. A calibration procedure that is effective with low overlapping views is also contributed. The final contribution is a procedure to maintain reconstruction accuracy overtime in a mostly static environment.

In this thesis we study the problem of multi-session dense rgb-d slam for 3D reconstruc- tion. Multi-session reconstruction can allow users to capture parts of an object that could not easily be captured in one session, due for instance to poor accessibility or user mistakes. We first present a thorough overview of single-session dense rgb-d slam and describe the multi-session problem as a loosening of the incremental camera movement and static scene assumptions commonly held in the single-session case. We then implement and evaluate sev- eral variations on a system for doing two-session reconstruction as an extension to a single- session dense rgb-d slam system. The extension from one to several sessions is divided into registering separate sessions into a single reference frame, re-optimizing the camera trajectories, and fusing together the data to generate a final 3D model. Registration is done by matching reconstructed models from the separate sessions using one of two adaptations on a 3D object detection pipeline. The registration pipelines are evaluated with many different sub-steps on a challenging dataset and it is found that robust registration can be achieved using the proposed methods on scenes without degenerate shape symmetry. In particular we find that using plane matches between two sessions as constraints for as much as possible of the registration pipeline improves results. Several different strategies for re-optimizing camera trajectories using data from both ses- sions are implemented and evaluated. The re-optimization strategies are based on re- tracking the camera poses from all sessions together, and then optionally optimizing over the full problem as represented on a pose-graph. The camera tracking is done by incrementally building and tracking against a tsdf volume, from which a final 3D mesh model is extracted. The whole system is qualitatively evaluated against a realistic dataset for multi-session re- construction. It is concluded that the overall approach is successful in reconstructing objects from several sessions, but that other fine grained registration methods would be required in order to achieve multi-session reconstructions that are indistinguishable from singe-session results in terms of reconstruction quality.

Avec la statistique correspondant à la luminosité de 20,7 fb-1 intégrée à la réso- nance Y(4S) par l'expérience BABAR, nous avons reconstruit de façon complète des échantillons purs à 90 % de 6967+/-95 mésons B0/B0bar et 7266+/-94 mésons B+/B-. Il s'agit du plus grand échantillon de mésons B complètement reconstruits au monde. Cet échantillon est fondamental pour les analyses temporelles essentielles du programme expérimental de BABAR. Elles consistent à étudier l'évolution temporelle des mésons B pour déterminer les grandeurs physiques associées à la violation de CP , la fréquence delta-m des oscillations B 0 B 0 et les durées de vie des mésons B. La première observation de la violation de CP dans le système B0 /B0bar a utilisé notre échantillon de mésons B neutres pour séparer l'effet recherché de ceux des imperfections de la détermination expérimentale de la saveur des mésons B. Pour les mesures de delta-m et des durées de vie, cet échantillon constitue le signal. La mesure des durées de vie était l'objectif principal de cette thèse. Nous avons obtenu les résultats suivants : tau(B 0 ) = 1,546 +/-0,032 (stat) +/- 0,022 (syst) ps , tau(B + ) = 1,673 +/- 0,032 (stat) +/- 0,023 (syst) ps , tau(B + )/tau(B 0 ) = 1,082 +/- 0,026 (stat) +/- 0,012 (syst) : La précision est sensiblement la meme que celle des résultats combinés de toutes les expériences antérieures publiés en 2000. Il s'agit de la première mesure des durées de vie des mésons B eectuée à l'énergie de l'Y(4S). Nous avons mis au point une nouvelle méthode de mesure optimisée pour ces conditions expérimentales. Nos résultats sont compatibles avec les valeurs moyennes de l'année 2000. Les prédictions théoriques les plus récentes présentées pendant l'été 2001 sont en excellent accord avec nos mesures.

L’analisi del movimento umano ha come obiettivo la descrizione del movimento assoluto e relativo dei segmenti ossei del soggetto e, ove richiesto, dei relativi tessuti molli durante l’esecuzione di esercizi fisici. La bioingegneria mette a disposizione dell’analisi del movimento gli strumenti ed i metodi necessari per una valutazione quantitativa di efficacia, funzione e/o qualità del movimento umano, consentendo al clinico l’analisi di aspetti non individuabili con gli esami tradizionali. Tali valutazioni possono essere di ausilio all’analisi clinica di pazienti e, specialmente con riferimento a problemi ortopedici, richiedono una elevata accuratezza e precisione perché il loro uso sia valido. Il miglioramento della affidabilità dell’analisi del movimento ha quindi un impatto positivo sia sulla metodologia utilizzata, sia sulle ricadute cliniche della stessa. Per perseguire gli obiettivi scientifici descritti, è necessario effettuare una stima precisa ed accurata della posizione e orientamento nello spazio dei segmenti ossei in esame durante l’esecuzione di un qualsiasi atto motorio. Tale descrizione può essere ottenuta mediante la definizione di un modello della porzione del corpo sotto analisi e la misura di due tipi di informazione: una relativa al movimento ed una alla morfologia. L’obiettivo è quindi stimare il vettore posizione e la matrice di orientamento necessari a descrivere la collocazione nello spazio virtuale 3D di un osso utilizzando le posizioni di punti, definiti sulla superficie cutanea ottenute attraverso la stereofotogrammetria. Le traiettorie dei marker, così ottenute, vengono utilizzate per la ricostruzione della posizione e dell’orientamento istantaneo di un sistema di assi solidale con il segmento sotto esame (sistema tecnico) (Cappozzo et al. 2005). Tali traiettorie e conseguentemente i sistemi tecnici, sono affetti da due tipi di errore, uno associato allo strumento di misura e l’altro associato alla presenza di tessuti molli interposti tra osso e cute. La propagazione di quest’ultimo ai risultati finali è molto più distruttiva rispetto a quella dell’errore strumentale che è facilmente minimizzabile attraverso semplici tecniche di filtraggio (Chiari et al. 2005). In letteratura è stato evidenziato che l’errore dovuto alla deformabilità dei tessuti molli durante l’analisi del movimento umano provoca inaccuratezze tali da mettere a rischio l’utilizzabilità dei risultati. A tal proposito Andriacchi scrive: “attualmente, uno dei fattori critici che rallentano il progresso negli studi del movimento umano è la misura del movimento scheletrico partendo dai marcatori posti sulla cute” (Andriacchi et al. 2000). Relativamente alla morfologia, essa può essere acquisita, ad esempio, attraverso l’utilizzazione di tecniche per bioimmagini. Queste vengono fornite con riferimento a sistemi di assi locali in generale diversi dai sistemi tecnici. Per integrare i dati relativi al movimento con i dati morfologici occorre determinare l’operatore che consente la trasformazione tra questi due sistemi di assi (matrice di registrazione) e di conseguenza è fondamentale l’individuazione di particolari terne di riferimento, dette terne anatomiche. L’identificazione di queste terne richiede la localizzazione sul segmento osseo di particolari punti notevoli, detti repere anatomici, rispetto ad un sistema di riferimento solidale con l’osso sotto esame. Tale operazione prende il nome di calibrazione anatomica. Nella maggior parte dei laboratori di analisi del movimento viene implementata una calibrazione anatomica a “bassa risoluzione” che prevede la descrizione della morfologia dell’osso a partire dall’informazione relativa alla posizione di alcuni repere corrispondenti a prominenze ossee individuabili tramite palpazione. Attraverso la stereofotogrammetria è quindi possibile registrare la posizione di questi repere rispetto ad un sistema tecnico. Un diverso approccio di calibrazione anatomica può essere realizzato avvalendosi delle tecniche ad “alta risoluzione”, ovvero attraverso l’uso di bioimmagini. In questo caso è necessario disporre di una rappresentazione digitale dell’osso in un sistema di riferimento morfologico e localizzare i repere d’interesse attraverso palpazione in ambiente virtuale (Benedetti et al. 1994 ; Van Sint Jan et al. 2002; Van Sint Jan et al. 2003). Un simile approccio è difficilmente applicabile nella maggior parte dei laboratori di analisi del movimento, in quanto normalmente non si dispone della strumentazione necessaria per ottenere le bioimmagini; inoltre è noto che tale strumentazione in alcuni casi può essere invasiva. Per entrambe le calibrazioni anatomiche rimane da tenere in considerazione che, generalmente, i repere anatomici sono dei punti definiti arbitrariamente all’interno di un’area più vasta e irregolare che i manuali di anatomia definiscono essere il repere anatomico. L’identificazione dei repere attraverso una loro descrizione verbale è quindi povera in precisione e la difficoltà nella loro identificazione tramite palpazione manuale, a causa della presenza dei tessuti molli interposti, genera errori sia in precisione che in accuratezza. Tali errori si propagano alla stima della cinematica e della dinamica articolare (Ramakrishnan et al. 1991; Della Croce et al. 1999). Della Croce (Della Croce et al. 1999) ha inoltre evidenziato che gli errori che influenzano la collocazione nello spazio delle terne anatomiche non dipendono soltanto dalla precisione con cui vengono identificati i repere anatomici, ma anche dalle regole che si utilizzano per definire le terne. E’ infine necessario evidenziare che la palpazione manuale richiede tempo e può essere effettuata esclusivamente da personale altamente specializzato, risultando quindi molto onerosa (Simon 2004). La presente tesi prende lo spunto dai problemi sopra elencati e ha come obiettivo quello di migliorare la qualità delle informazioni necessarie alla ricostruzione della cinematica 3D dei segmenti ossei in esame affrontando i problemi posti dall’artefatto di tessuto molle e le limitazioni intrinseche nelle attuali procedure di calibrazione anatomica. I problemi sono stati affrontati sia mediante procedure di elaborazione dei dati, sia apportando modifiche ai protocolli sperimentali che consentano di conseguire tale obiettivo. Per quanto riguarda l’artefatto da tessuto molle, si è affrontato l’obiettivo di sviluppare un metodo di stima che fosse specifico per il soggetto e per l’atto motorio in esame e, conseguentemente, di elaborare un metodo che ne consentisse la minimizzazione. Il metodo di stima è non invasivo, non impone restrizione al movimento dei tessuti molli, utilizza la sola misura stereofotogrammetrica ed è basato sul principio della media correlata. Le prestazioni del metodo sono state valutate su dati ottenuti mediante una misura 3D stereofotogrammetrica e fluoroscopica sincrona (Stagni et al. 2005), (Stagni et al. 2005). La coerenza dei risultati raggiunti attraverso i due differenti metodi permette di considerare ragionevoli le stime dell’artefatto ottenute con il nuovo metodo. Tale metodo fornisce informazioni sull’artefatto di pelle in differenti porzioni della coscia del soggetto e durante diversi compiti motori, può quindi essere utilizzato come base per un piazzamento ottimo dei marcatori. Lo si è quindi utilizzato come punto di partenza per elaborare un metodo di compensazione dell’errore dovuto all’artefatto di pelle che lo modella come combinazione lineare degli angoli articolari di anca e ginocchio. Il metodo di compensazione è stato validato attraverso una procedura di simulazione sviluppata ad-hoc. Relativamente alla calibrazione anatomica si è ritenuto prioritario affrontare il problema associato all’identificazione dei repere anatomici perseguendo i seguenti obiettivi: 1. migliorare la precisione nell’identificazione dei repere e, di conseguenza, la ripetibilità dell’identificazione delle terne anatomiche e della cinematica articolare, 2. diminuire il tempo richiesto, 3. permettere che la procedura di identificazione possa essere eseguita anche da personale non specializzato. Il perseguimento di tali obiettivi ha portato alla implementazione dei seguenti metodi: • Inizialmente è stata sviluppata una procedura di palpazione virtuale automatica. Dato un osso digitale, la procedura identifica automaticamente i punti di repere più significativi, nella maniera più precisa possibile e senza l'ausilio di un operatore esperto, sulla base delle informazioni ricavabili da un osso digitale di riferimento (template), preliminarmente palpato manualmente. • E’ stato poi condotto uno studio volto ad indagare i fattori metodologici che influenzano le prestazioni del metodo funzionale nell’individuazione del centro articolare d’anca, come prerequisito fondamentale per migliorare la procedura di calibrazione anatomica. A tale scopo sono stati confrontati diversi algoritmi, diversi cluster di marcatori ed è stata valutata la prestazione del metodo in presenza di compensazione dell’artefatto di pelle. • E’stato infine proposto un metodo alternativo di calibrazione anatomica basato sull’individuazione di un insieme di punti non etichettati, giacenti sulla superficie dell’osso e ricostruiti rispetto ad un TF (UP-CAST). A partire dalla posizione di questi punti, misurati su pelvi coscia e gamba, la morfologia del relativo segmento osseo è stata stimata senza identificare i repere, bensì effettuando un’operazione di matching dei punti misurati con un modello digitale dell’osso in esame. La procedura di individuazione dei punti è stata eseguita da personale non specializzato nell’individuazione dei repere anatomici. Ai soggetti in esame è stato richiesto di effettuare dei cicli di cammino in modo tale da poter indagare gli effetti della nuova procedura di calibrazione anatomica sulla determinazione della cinematica articolare. I risultati ottenuti hanno mostrato, per quel che riguarda la identificazione dei repere, che il metodo proposto migliora sia la precisione inter- che intraoperatore, rispetto alla palpazione convenzionale (Della Croce et al. 1999). E’ stato inoltre riscontrato un notevole miglioramento, rispetto ad altri protocolli (Charlton et al. 2004; Schwartz et al. 2004), nella ripetibilità della cinematica 3D di anca e ginocchio. Bisogna inoltre evidenziare che il protocollo è stato applicato da operatori non specializzati nell’identificazione dei repere anatomici. Grazie a questo miglioramento, la presenza di diversi operatori nel laboratorio non genera una riduzione di ripetibilità. Infine, il tempo richiesto per la procedura è drasticamente diminuito. Per una analisi che include la pelvi e i due arti inferiori, ad esempio, l’identificazione dei 16 repere caratteristici usando la calibrazione convenzionale richiede circa 15 minuti, mentre col nuovo metodo tra i 5 e i 10 minuti.

Ce travail porte sur la tomographie micro-ondes, technique d’imagerie permettant de reconstruire une image tridimensionnelledes propriétés diélectriques d’un volume inconnu à partir d’une succession de mesures du champ électromagnétique diffracté par ce volume. Cette modalité d’imagerie est prometteuse dans un grand nombre d’applications (imagerie médicale, géophysique,contrôle non destructif de matériaux, ...) mais souffre d’un inconvénient majeur, un coût de calcul très élevé des algorithmes de reconstruction, qui freine son développement industriel. Ce problème d’imagerie micro-ondes est vu comme un problème inverse où l’on cherche à minimiser l’erreur entre les données et un modèle direct simulant la diffraction de l’onde. Ce problème est mal-posé, en particulier car le nombre d’inconnues est supérieur au nombre de mesures. La solution est donc définie par la minimisation d’un critère des moindres carrés pénalisé par une fonction de régularisation, dont l’optimisation requiert la mise en oeuvre d’algorithmes itératifs d’optimisation locale. Le modèle direct est en outre non-linéaire, rendant la reconstruction plus difficile. Le calcul de ce modèle direct, nécessaire au calcul du critère et de son gradient à chaque itération, concentre la majorité du coût de calcul de l’inversion. Il repose sur la résolution d’un grand nombre de systèmes linéaires. Nous proposons dans cette thèse de réduire le coût de calcul de ces méthodes de reconstruction en se focalisant sur ces résolutions de systèmes. Pour cela, les travaux sont divisés en deux contributions. Tout d’abord, nous proposons une procédure permettant de réduire le nombre de systèmes à résoudre en s’appuyant sur la configuration du montage d’acquisition. La seconde contribution est d’accélérer les résolutions de systèmes à l’aide d’algorithmes par blocs. Ce type d’approche permet de résoudre conjointement plusieurs systèmes linéaires impliquant la même matrice opérateur. Ces méthodes sont validées sur des simulations de problèmes 3D réalistes, puis appliquées à la reconstruction d’objets réels sur des données expérimentales de champs diffractés. Des résultats satisfaisants de reconstruction sont obtenus, où un gain d’un facteur deux sur le temps de calcul est obtenu, notamment sur les problèmes de reconstruction les plus difficiles
This thesis is focused on microwave tomography. This imaging technique consists in estimating a three-dimensional mapping of the dielectric properties of an unknown volume from measurements of the electromagnetic field from a known incident wave and scattered by this volume. This is a promising technique that is used in various applications (medical imaging, geophysics, non- destructive testing,...) but suffers from high computational costs. This is a reason why microwave imaging is not widely used in industry. Microwave imaging is considered as an inverse problem, where the error between the measurements and a forward model that describes the scattered field is minimized as a function of the properties of the volume. This inverse problem is ill-posed because the number of unknowns is higher than the number of measurements. It is tackled through the minimization of a regularized least-squares cost function, which is addressed by local iterative optimization algorithms. Moreover, the forward model is non-linear. Thus,reconstruction is a difficult and expensive procedure. The computation of the objective function and its gradient requires the resolution of a high number of linear systems, which are performed at each iteration of the optimization algorithm and represent most of the computational cost. In this thesis, we propose to reduce the computational costs of the reconstruction algorithms by focusing on the resolution of these linear systems. Two contributions are presented. The first one is a procedure in order to reduce the number of linear systems depending on the configuration of the measurement setup. The second contribution offers an efficient way to speed up the resolutions of the systems. We adapt block resolution algorithms, in order to jointly solve multiple linear systems involving a common operator matrix. These methods are validated on simulated, realistic, 3D problems, and applied to the reconstruction of real objects from experimental measurements of scattered fields. satisfactory results are obtained, where the computation time can be reduced by a factor of two, in particular for the most difficult reconstruction problems

Surface reconstruction and 3D modeling is a challenging task, which has been explored for decades by the computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning communities. It is fundamental to many applications such as robot navigation, animation and scene understanding, industrial control and medical diagnosis. In this dissertation, I take advantage of the consumer depth sensors for surface reconstruction. Considering its limited performance on capturing detailed surface geometry, a depth enhancement approach is proposed in the first place to recovery small and rich geometric details with captured depth and color sequence. In addition to enhancing its spatial resolution, I present a hybrid camera to improve the temporal resolution of consumer depth sensor and propose an optimization framework to capture high speed motion and generate high speed depth streams. Given the partial scans from the depth sensor, we also develop a novel fusion approach to build up complete and watertight human models with a template guided registration method. Finally, the problem of surface reconstruction for non-Lambertian objects, on which the current depth sensor fails, is addressed by exploiting multi-view images captured with a hand-held color camera and we propose a visual hull based approach to recovery the 3D model.

Cette these est consacree a la mesure de la fonction de fragmentation du quark b, aupres du detecteur aleph, au lep. Un element essentiel de cette mesure est d'etre la plus independante possible de tout modele. Dans ce but, nous reconstruisons les modes de desintegration semi-leptoniques du meson b, dans les canaux lnud, lnud* et lnud+. Nous decrivons tout d'abord les criteres imposes pour selectionner ces modes. Nous determinons ensuite la fonction de fragmentation, en mesurant le rapport xb, rapport entre l'energie eb du meson b et l'energie disponible dans le centre de masse. La mesure de eb necessite une reconstruction precise de l'energie du neutron, qui n'est pas detecte. Nous en presentons la methode. Une fois la correction d'acceptance appliquee, nous obtenons, pour la variable xb, une distribution de valeur moyenne egale a: 0. 711+0. 009 (stat). Afin de s'affranchir au mieux du modele (fonction de peterson) utilise dans la determination monte carlo de l'acceptance, nous effectuons un calcul iteratif de cette derniere. Nous obtenons alors la valeur moyenne: 0. 712+0. 009 (stat) +0. 017 (syst). Cette mesure depend de la contribution des etats d**, mal connue a l'heure actuelle. Aussi recherchons-nous cette contribution a l'aide des evenements selectionnes precedemment, d'une part par observation directe, d'autre part en reconstruisant la masse du meson b

In general, stereovision can be defined as a two part problem. The first is the correspondence problem. This involves determining the image point in each image of a set of images that correspond to the same physical point P. We will call this set of image points, N. The second problem is the reconstruction problem. Once a set of image points, N, that correspond to point P has been determined, N is then used to extract three dimensional information about point P. This master's thesis presents three novel solutions to the reconstruction problem. Two of the techniques presented are for detecting the location of a 3-D point and one for detecting a line expressed in a three dimensional coordinate system. These techniques are tested and validated using a unique 3-D finger detection algorithm. The techniques presented are unique because of their simplicity and because they do not require the cameras to be placed in specific locations, orientations or have specific alignments. On the contrary, it will be shown that the techniques presented in this thesis allow the two cameras used to assume almost any relative pose provided that the object of interest is within their field of view. The relative pose of the cameras at a given instant in time, along with basic equations from the perspective image model are used to form a system of equations that when solved, reveal the 3-D coordinates of a particular fixed point of interest or the three dimensional equation of a fixed line of interest. Finally, it will be shown that a single moving camera can successfully perform the same line and point detection accomplished by two cameras by altering the pose of the camera. The results presented in this work are beneficial to any typical stereovision application because of the computational ease in comparison to other point and line reconstruction techniques. But more importantly, this work allows for a single moving camera to perceive three-dimensional position information, which effectively removes the two camera constraint for a stereo vision system. When used with other monocular cues such as texture or color, the work presented in this thesis could be as accurate as binocular stereo vision at interpreting three dimensional information. Thus, this work could potentially increase the three dimensional perception of a robot that normally uses one camera, such as an eye-in-hand robot or a snake like robot.

Les désintégrations semileptoniques du méson $B$ participent à la détermination de certains paramètres fondamentaux du Modèle Standard. Ce travail décrit essentiellement l'étude des deux canaux de désintégrations $B_s \to D_s \ell \bar\nu_\ell$ et $B\to D^{**} \ell\bar\nu_\ell$ (où les $D^{**}$ sont les premières excitations orbitales des mésons $D$ ayant une parité positive). Le cadre théorique est celui de la QCD sur réseau qui, en discrétisant l'espace-temps, permet de calculer non perturbativement les fonctions de Green de la théorie. En utilisant l'action à masse twistée avec deux saveurs dégénérées de quarks dynamiques ($N_f=2$), nous avons commencé par étudier la spectroscopie des états charmés scalaires $D_0^*$ et tenseurs $D_2^*$. Ensuite, nous avons réalisé la détermination du facteur de forme $G_s(1)$ décrivant le processus $B_s\to D_s \ell \bar\nu_\ell$ dans le Modèle Standard. Ce paramètre offre un moyen d'extraire l'élément de la matrice CKM $V_{cb}$. Par ailleurs, et pour la première fois en QCD sur réseau, nous avons déterminé les rapports $F_0(q^2)/F_+(q^2)$ et $F_T(q^2)/F_+(q^2)$ dans la région proche du recul nul: ces contributions sont en effet nécessaires afin de discuter ce canal de désintégration dans certains modèles au-delà du Modèle Standard. Enfin, une étude préliminaire du canal de désintégration $B\to D^{**}$ a été abordée où nous avons trouvé une valeur non nulle de l'élément de matrice décrivant la désintégration $B\to D_0^*$ à recul nul contrairement de ce qui est connu à la limite des quarks lourds. Dans le cas du $B \to D_2^*$, nos résultats ont montré un signal indiquant une différence par rapport aux prédictions de masse infinie. Ces calculs sont indispensables afin de tirer une conclusion plus solide concernant le ''puzzle 1/2 vs 3/2''.

The aim of this study is to investigate the behaviour and application of an evolutionary algorithm (EA) based on a particular approach of cooperative co-evolution algorithm (CCEA), the Parisian Approach. It evolves and keeps an entire population as an optimal solution to the problem instead of keeping only the best individual in classical EAs. The CCEA we selected is called the “Fly algorithm”. It is named after flies, because the individuals are extremely primitive and correspond to three-dimensional (3-D) points. This algorithm has been relatively overlooked despite showing promising results in real-time robotic and image reconstruction in tomography. Our focus in this study is on two types of applications: medical imaging and digital art. i) In the medical application, we aim to improve quantitative results in 3-D reconstructed volumes in positron emission tomography (PET).We investigate the use of density fields, based on Metaballs and on Gaussian functions respectively, to obtain a realistic output. We also investigate how to exploit individuals’ fitness to modulate their individual footprint in the final reconstructed volume. An individual’s fitness can be seen as a level of confidence in its 3-D position. The resulting volumes are compared with previous work in terms of normalised-cross correlation. In our test cases, data fidelity increases by more than 10% when density fields are used instead of using a naive approach. Our method also provides reconstructions comparable to those obtained using well-established techniques used in medicine (e.g., filtered back-projection (FBP) and ordered subset expectation-maximization (OSEM)). Our algorithm relies heavily on the mutation operator. We propose 4 different fully adaptive mutation operators: basic mutation, adaptive mutation variance, dual mutation and directed mutation. Their impact on the algorithm efficiency is analysed and validated on PET reconstruction. ii) In the digital art application, we present the first application of the Fly algorithm in digital art. This branch of digital art is called “evolutionary art”. The motivation is to evaluate the algorithm with a much more complex structure of flies. They are still defined as simplistic primitives (3-D points) but with colours, sizes and rotations. Different visual effects were investigated, such as mosaic-like images and spray paint rendering. An online survey (including 41 participates) was conducted to validate our approach. Participants compared our results with similar ones generated with open-source software (GIMP). Again, our method shows promising results. In conclusion, our investigations confirm that the Fly algorithm works well with a complex search space. We demonstrate a fast and accurate solution to optimise a set of parameters in both applications. The Fly algorithm can improve reconstructed image quality compared to FBP and OSEM in medical application and to GIMP in digital art application.

Les désintégrations semileptoniques du méson $B$ participent à la détermination de certains paramètres fondamentaux du Modèle Standard. Ce travail décrit essentiellement l'étude des deux canaux de désintégrations $B_s \to D_s \ell \bar\nu_\ell$ et $B\to D^{**} \ell \bar\nu_\ell$ (où les $D^{**}$ sont les premières excitations orbitales des mésons $D$ ayant une parité positive). Le cadre théorique est celui de la QCD sur réseau qui, en discrétisant l'espace-temps, permet de calculer non perturbativement les fonctions de Green de la théorie. En utilisant l'action à masse twistée avec deux saveurs dégénérées de quarks dynamiques ($N_f=2$), nous avons commencé par étudier la spectroscopie des états charmés scalaires $D_0^*$ et tenseurs $D_2^*$. Ensuite, nous avons réalisé la détermination du facteur de forme $\mathscr G_s(1)$ décrivant le processus $B_s\to D_s \ell \bar\nu_\ell$ dans le Modèle Standard. Ce paramètre offre un moyen d'extraire l'élément de la matrice CKM $V_{cb}$. Par ailleurs, et pour la première fois en QCD sur réseau, nous avons déterminé les rapports $F_0(q^2)/F_+(q^2)$ et $F_T(q^2)/F_+(q^2)$ dans la région proche du recul nul: ces contributions sont en effet nécessaires afin de discuter ce canal de désintégration dans certains modèles au-delà du Modèle Standard. Enfin, une étude préliminaire du canal de désintégration $B\to D^{**}$ a été abordée où nous avons trouvé une valeur non nulle de l'élément de matrice décrivant la désintégration $B\to D_0^*$ à recul nul contrairement de ce qui est connu à la limite des quarks lourds. Dans le cas du $B \to D_2^*$, nos résultats ont montré un signal indiquant une différence par rapport aux prédictions de masse infinie. Ces calculs sont indispensables afin de tirer une conclusion plus solide concernant le ''puzzle 1/2 vs 3/2''

PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO
CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO
Sensores de profundidade do tipo RGB-D são alternativas interessantes para realizar a reconstrução 3D do ambiente a um baixo custo. Neste trabalho, avaliamos uma pipe-line de reconstrução implementada em GPU que une um sistema de tracking baseado no alinhamento de nuvem de pontos para estimar a posição da câmera e um sistema de reconstrução/visualização volumétrica para suavizar as medidas naturalmente ruidosas do sensor, utilizando o Kinect como entrada RGB-D. Foi feita uma análise técnica do algoritmo, demonstrando o impacto de modificações de parâmetros do sistema, além de um comparativo de tempo e precisão entre a implementação aqui apresentada e uma versão pública disponibilizada pela Point Cloud Library(PCL) durante o desenvolvimento deste trabalho. Algumas modificações em relação ao trabalho original foram feitas e os testes de desempenho demonstram que nossa implementação é mais rápida do que a da PCL sem comprometer significantemente a precisão da reconstrução.
Depth sensors of the type RGB-D are interesting alternatives to do a 3D reconstruction of the environment with low cost. In this work, we evaluate a reconstruction pipe-line implemented on GPU that merges a point cloud alignment tracking system to estimate the camera position and a volumetric reconstruction/visualization to smooth the naturally noise measures from the sensor, using the Kinect as RGB-D input. A technical analysis of the algorithm has been made, showing the impact of parameter modifications of the system and a comparative of time and precision between the presented implementation and a public version available by the Point Cloud Library (PCL) during the development of this work. Some modifications to the original work have been made and the performance tests demonstrate that our implementation is faster than the PCL version without compromising the reconstruction precision.

Photorealistic 3-D models are used in a wide variety of applications from entertainment and games, through to simulation, training . Algorithms to automatically create such models from ordinary photographs can vastly reduce the workload and expense associated with acquiring such models. The vast majority of research into reconstructing 3-D models from images has concentrated on the case of single objects. This thesis presents a method to model complex multi-object scenes in a series of steps starting with a set of images which surround a scene and ?nally producing a complete photorealistic representation of the objects. The probabilistic space carving algorithm is used to provide an initial estimate of shape as it makes no assumptions about the shape of the scene aside from the bounding cuboid. This representation is smoothed by fitting a Radial Basis Function implicit surface, which smoothes noise and interpolates any missing data. Errors which persist are addressed by a matching surface points between images and estimating the perspective transformation between them which is used to calculate the correct position for the point, which is consistent with the input images. The model may be corrected by constraining the surface to pass through these points. The smoothing properties of RBFs can cause problems by interpolating across objects which are close together, causing them to be joined in the representation. A method is presented to correct this by enforcing consistency between edges in 2-D and 3-D. Experiments are conducted using real image sequences of complex multi-object scenes. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations are performed demonstrating the effectiveness of the methods presented. In addition to modelling all of the objects present, colour surfaces are produced from which even the text is legible. A detailed study is undertaken into the factors which influence the effectiveness of techniques to recover partially or fully fused objects and conclusions are drawn which hint at the ultimate limit of accuracy in the case of multiple objects.