Eye contact technique using depth image based rendering for immersive videoconferencing

The lack of eye contact severely hinders effective communication in video conferencing. This problem is caused by the disparity between locations of the subject and the camera. 3D video processing techniques, including depth estimation and virtual view synthesis, can be used to correct the eye gaze. They enable an economic and effective setup that can be applicable to large display monitors. In this paper, we have designed a set of color and depth cameras to reduce occlusion regions and improve the depth precision in the less-detailed region. The system setup overcomes some inherent problems of depth sensing.