  We present a method to jointly refine the geometry and semantic segmentation
of 3D surface meshes. Our method alternates between updating the shape and the
semantic labels. In the geometry refinement step, the mesh is deformed with
variational energy minimization, such that it simultaneously maximizes
photo-consistency and the compatibility of the semantic segmentations across a
set of calibrated images. Label-specific shape priors account for interactions
between the geometry and the semantic labels in 3D. In the semantic
segmentation step, the labels on the mesh are updated with MRF inference, such
that they are compatible with the semantic segmentations in the input images.
Also, this step includes prior assumptions about the surface shape of different
semantic classes. The priors induce a tight coupling, where semantic
information influences the shape update and vice versa. Specifically, we
introduce priors that favor (i) adaptive smoothing, depending on the class
label; (ii) straightness of class boundaries; and (iii) semantic labels that
are consistent with the surface orientation. The novel mesh-based
reconstruction is evaluated in a series of experiments with real and synthetic
data. We compare both to state-of-the-art, voxel-based semantic 3D
reconstruction, and to purely geometric mesh refinement, and demonstrate that
the proposed scheme yields improved 3D geometry as well as an improved semantic
segmentation.
