Intermediate view synthesis from binocular images for stereoscopic applications

A new method was proposed in this paper for synthesizing intermediate views from binocular images captured by parallel cameras. The main techniques include: (1) predictive and multistage block-matching procedure for disparity estimation, (2) disparity interpolation for ill-correspondence and occlusion regions, and (3) image synthesis by hypothesized-and-tested block image rendering. The method features speedy (3 times) and accurate estimation of disparity map, as well as a tradeoff between synthesis quality (pixel-based disparities) and synthesis speed (4×4 block-based rendering). Experiments show that our synthesis results are generally good without distinctive defects and should be promising in the applications of 3-D virtual reality in entertainment, simulation, etc