Efficient depth map coding using linear residue approximation and a flexible prediction framework

The importance to develop more efficient 3D and multiview data representation algorithms results from the recent market growth for 3D video equipments and associated services. One of the most investigated formats is video+depth which uses depth image based rendering (DIBR) to combine the information of texture and depth, in order to create an arbitrary number of views in the decoder. Such approach requires that depth information must be accurately encoded. However, methods usually employed to encode texture do not seem to be suitable for depth map coding. In this paper we propose a novel depth map coding algorithm based on the assumption that depth images are piecewise-linear smooth signals. This algorithm is designed to encode sharp edges using a flexible dyadic block segmentation and hierarchical intra-prediction framework. The residual signal from this operation is aggregated into blocks which are approximated using linear modeling functions. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm uses a dictionary that increases the coding efficiency for previously used approximations. Experimental results for depth map coding show that synthesized views using the depth maps encoded by the proposed algorithm present higher PSNR than their counterparts, demonstrating the method´s efficiency.