An improved depth map estimation for coding and view synthesis

Inaccuracy depth estimation may influence on depth coding and virtual view rendering in the free-viewpoint television (FTV) system, an improved depth map estimation is proposed to solve the problem for coding and view synthesis. Firstly, check the consistency of initial depth, and the influence of initial miss-matches is minimized by introduction of an additional adaptive matching error selection that penalizes the unreliable matches. Then according to certain criteria, the multi-reference depth maps are merged into one disparity map to improve the quality of disparity map. Finally, a multilateral filtering is used to preserve details in the depth map and simultaneously smooth the depths in occluded areas at object boundary, less texture and discontinuity regions. Experimental results show a significant improvement of the initial input depth maps and coding efficiency, as well as a reduction of view synthesis artifacts.