Depth consistency testing for improved view interpolation

Multiview video will play a pivotal role in the next generation visual communication media services like three-dimensional (3D) television and free-viewpoint television. These advanced media services provide natural 3D impressions and enable viewers to move freely in a dynamic real world scene by changing the viewpoint. High quality virtual view interpolation is required to support free viewpoint viewing. Usually, depth maps of different viewpoints are used to reconstruct a novel view. As these depth maps are usually estimated individually by stereo-matching algorithms, they have very weak spatial consistency. The inconsistency of depth maps affects the quality of view interpolation. In this paper, we propose a method for depth consistency testing to improve view interpolation. The method addresses the problem by warping more than two depth maps from multiple reference viewpoints to the virtual viewpoint. We test the consistency among warped depth values and improve the depth value information of the virtual view. With that, we enhance the quality of the interpolated virtual view.