Function reconstructs an estimate of a surface from its surface normals by correlating the surface normals with that those of a bank of shapelet basis functions. The correlation results are summed to produce the reconstruction. The sumation of shapelet basis functions results in an implicit integration of the surface while enforcing surface continuity.



Note that the reconstruction is only valid up to a scale factor (which can be corrected for). However the reconstruction process is very robust to noise and to missing data values. Reconstructions (up to positive/negative shape ambiguity) are possible where there is an ambiguity of pi in tilt values. Low quality reconstructions are also possible with just slant, or just tilt data alone. However, if you have full gradient information you are better off with the Frankot Chellappa algorithm below.