This dissertation proposes a novel approach to achieve circumferential three-dimensional (3D) profiling for dark objects by investigating specular micro-texture photometry. A small patch of a target surface in micro-texture level yields different appearance under different illumination. This photometric property can be used to reconstruct the target surface with pixel-level resolution. However, due to the nature of some material, the surface of whom has stronger specular components than diffuse components, making the usage of general microtexture photometry more difficult. On the other hand, without using micro-texture photometry, the conventional circumferential 3D approaches only utilizes the geometric property of the target surface, compared to which, the proposed is able to reconstruct the target surface with finer detail. The original contributions of this dissertation are threefold. To begin with, the specular component in the micro-texture photometry is investigated to propose the pixel-level 3D profiling. The intensities of the same pixel from different images, which are taken under different lighting conditions are different. The specular components are used to recover the surface normal of the corresponding surface patch of the target surface. Consequently, the proposed specular-photometry-based technique produces pixel-wise measurement on surface normal. Furthermore, the conventional circumferential 3D profiling approach is extended with the proposed specular-photometry-based technique. The result of 3D profiling via the conventional approach is sparse due to its nature. On the other hand, the result of 3D profiling from the integration using the surface normal obtained from the proposed specular-photometry-based technique suffers from accumulative error. A new approach is then proposed to use the result from the conventional approach as global constraint, for the purpose of reducing the accumulative error. The proposed approach is able to achieve pixel-resolution globally bounded profiling because of the dense surface normal measurement from the proposed specular-photometry-based technique and the constraints from the conventional approach. Lastly, a system is developed to apply the proposed circumferential specular-photometry-based 3D profiling approach. The developed system is not only able to acquire data and but also to provide different lighting conditions for both the specular-photometry-based technique and conventional approach using a digital single-lens reflex camera and different lighting devices. With a step motor to rotate the object for three hundred and sixty degrees, the system is able to achieve circumferential scanning / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation explains a novel approach to fulfill circumferential 3D profiling with high resolution for dark objects. With the proposed approach, the resolution is able to achieve micro-texture level. The high resolution measurement is achieved by investigating specular micro-texture photometry. As for dark objects, the specular components dominate the reflection. The usage of photometry is explained as follow. A small patch of a target surface yields different appearance under different illumination. For the material of the surface of dark objects, the surface reflects stronger specular components than diffuse components. The proposed approach utilizes this photometric property to recover the small patch's surface normal using its specular components. The recovered surface normal is then used to calculate the surface profile through integration. The conventional circumferential 3D profiling approach, which can only produce low-resolution measurement, is also adopted in the proposed approach to enhance its performance, as the integration method suffers from accumulative error. The result from the conventional approach serves as a global constraint to bound the final profiling result. A system is developed to apply the proposed circumferential specular-photometry-based 3D profiling approach, which is equipped with a step motor to rotate the object for three hundred and sixty degrees for the purpose of circumferential scanning. A series of numerical and experimental studies were conducted to validate the performance of the proposed approach. As it is shown in the result, the proposed approach is able to measure the tire tread with 31µm resolution.