Spatio-temporal consistency in video disparity estimation

We present a novel stereo video disparity estimation method. The proposed method is a two-stage algorithm. During the first stage, initial disparity maps are computed in a frameby-frame basis. In the second stage, the initial estimates are treated as a space-time volume. By setting up an l1-normed minimization problem with a novel three-dimensional total variation regularization, spatial smoothness and temporal consistency are handled simultaneously. Due to our unique formulation, any existing image disparity estimation technique may utilize our method as a post-processing step to refine noisy estimates or to be extended to videos. The proposed method shows superior speed, accuracy, and consistency compared to state-of-the-art algorithms.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: ICASSP
• Authors: Ramsin Khoshabeh, Stanley H. Chan, Truong Q. Nguyen
• Keywords: Disparity Estimation, Disparity Estimation Method, ICASSP 2011, Initial Disparity Maps, Signal Processing