Abstract: The surface orientation of a 3-D object in a scene can be determined by the photometric stereo method without the need of complicated computation,but this method is susceptible to a number of errors.In this paper, we not only discuss and analyse several kinds of major errors, but propose a new algorithm for error sensitivity analysis.This new one leads to a mush simpler derivation process and substantially rigorous sensitivity formula.It is demonstrated that the experimental results are fully consistent with the photometric stereo theory.

Key words: Error sensitivity analysis, Shape from shading, Lambertian reflectance needle map, Photometric stereo theory