Compression and transmission of depth maps for image-based rendering

We consider applications using depth-based Imagebased rendering (IBR), where the synthesis of arbitrary views occur at a remote location, necessitating the compression and transmission of depth-maps. Traditional image compression has been designed to provide maximum perceived visual quality, and a direct application is suboptimal for depth-map compression, since depth-maps are not directly viewed. In other words, the sensitivity of the rendering error depends on image content as well as on the depth map; we propose two improvements to take this into account. Firstly, we consider region-of-interest (ROI) coding, where we identify those regions of the image where accurate depth is most crucial. Secondly, we reshape the dynamic range of the depth map. Our experiments show a significant improvement in coding gain

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: ICIP
• Authors: Ravi Krishnamurthy, Bing-Bing Chai, Hai Tao, Sriram Sethuraman
• Keywords: Accurate Depth, Depth Map, ICIP 2001, Image Processing, Traditional Image Compression