A virtual environment for the simulation of 3D wood strands in multiple view systems for the particle size measurements

In this paper, we present a complete virtual environment for the computation of synthetic three-dimensional samples representing free falling wood strands. The proposed method permits to simulate acquisitions performed by real multiple view setups in which the stream of strands falling out of a conveyor belt is analyzed with image processing techniques in order to compute the particle size distribution. Unfortunately, experiments in real time applications are complex and expensive, and the ground true is almost impossible to measure in such conditions. The creation of a metric and fully virtual environment of falling wood strands represent a key feature in order to properly design the illuminotecnic and optical setups, optimize the image processing methods as well as the three- dimensional reconstruction techniques, using controlled and fully repeatable virtual image datasets.