Is it possible to calculate the height of an object in an image by processing its shadow?

An object is placed in the source light, which is at an angle wrt to object. Object's shadow is cast and the scene is captured by a camera.In that case is it possible to calculate the height of the object by processing the shadow of the object in the image with MATLAB?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

If the angle of the light source is known, then dividing the length of the shadow by tan() of the angle will give the height of the object in the same units as the length of the shadow is in.

If the angle of the light source is not known, then No, the shadow does not provide enough information in itself.

Also, you would need an absolute measure somewhere if you want absolute results.

[Navya Mohan]

If I can get the length of known height object and its shadow length under the same conditions, the angle of light source can be calculated using the tan function . Then can I use the known angle of incidence for calculating the height of unknown object? If so, how can I measure the pixel count and correlate to the actual height of an object?