Jaw-dropping new tech can build a 3D picture based on the reflection in a person's eyes.<br /><br />University of Maryland researchers say the reflective nature of the human eye is an underappreciated source of information about what the world around us looks like.<br /><br />In a paper currently under review, the team explain how by imaging the eyes of a moving person from different angles they reconstruct a 3D scene beyond the camera's line of sight.<br /><br />Examples extracted from test eye portraits have included recognisable 3D images of toy aliens and a dog.<br /><br />The researchers report the task was challenging due to the difficulty of accurately estimating eye poses and the entangled appearance of the eye iris and the scene reflections.<br /><br />The study website explains: "Our method jointly refines the cornea poses, the radiance field depicting the scene, and the observer's eye iris texture."<br /><br />Because the cornea geometry is approximately the same across all healthy adults, the pixel size of a person's cornea can be counted in the image and it can be computed exactly where their eyes are.<br /><br />The study explanation continues: "Using this insight, we train the radiance field on the eye reflections by shooting rays from the camera, and reflecting them off the approximated eye geometry.<br /><br />"To remove the iris from showing up in the reconstruction, we perform texture decomposition by simultaneously training a 2D texture map that learns the iris texture.<br /><br />"However, approximating the eye pose just from the image is always very noisy. To address this issue, we perform eye pose optimisation which is critical for performance."<br /><br />The researchers decided to test their work using the music videos from Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga to attempt to reconstruct what they were observing.<br /><br />The study website reports: "We manage to reconstruct the object that appears in Miley's eyes, and we observe an object resembling an upper body from Lady Gaga's eyes.<br /><br />"However, due to the quality of these videos, the correctness of the reconstruction is unclear."<br /><br />Applications are being considered, but it could be developed into a futuristic crime investigation tool similar to the famous Blade Runner film scene where a photograph is continually enhanced to offer detail of a scene.<br /><br />The researchers cannot currently comment on the study because the work is still under review in an academic conference.These glorious pictures show multi-coloured banded fields of confetti in full bloom in the Worcestershire countryside.<br /><br />Natural confetti is made from freeze-dried flower petals, and it is completely biodegradable.<br /><br />These fields of delphiniums, which belong to the Real Flower Petal Confetti Company in Pershore, will be in bloom for the next few weeks.<br /><br />Farmer Charles Hudson started the company after chancing across soggy paper confetti littering the grass outside his local church after a wedding. <br /><br />Many churches ban the use of the stuff one their grounds just for that reason.
