Improvement of phase-based algorithms for disparity estimation by means of magnitude information

Estimating depth information from two-dimensional stereoscopic image pairs is an important task in image processing. The disparity, i.e. the displacement of corresponding pixels in the image pair, can be estimated directly from local image phase in the Fourier domain. In this paper a combined FFT-based approach for disparity estimation is proposed, where additional magnitude information is included in the disparity estimation process. Confidence criteria derived from the magnitude spectra are used to eliminate errors which makes this approach both easier and more robust compared to single phase-based algorithms. Results are presented for an artificial image pair. A stereo image coding approach is applied to compare the results in an objective manner.