3D endoscopic imaging systems with DIBR

3D endoscopic imaging has played an important role in the development of the medical industry, making it easy for medical doctors to judge the visual depth of ulcers or tumors and thereby decreasing the risk of unnecessary damages to other tissues. A traditional 2D endoscopic image can be converted into a 3D view through depth estimation and the use of a Depth Image-Based Rendering (DIBR) method. However, the application of depth estimation may be too time-consuming for use with current medical equipment. In order to reduce the computing time, this work adopts hierarchical similarity analysis to separate images into different sizes in order to analyze the similarity and depth information estimation. As a result, this method not only reduces the system computation time, making it appropriate for use with current medical equipment, but also provide a good 3D view for medical doctors.