Stereo+Kinect for High Resolution Stereo Correspondences

In this work, we combine the complementary depth sensors Kinect and stereo image matching to obtain high quality correspondences. Our goal is to obtain a dense disparity map at the spatial and depth resolution of the stereo cameras (4-12 MP). We propose a global optimization scheme, where both the data and smoothness costs are derived using sensor confidences and low resolution geometry from Kinect. A spatially varying search range is used to limit the number of potential disparities at each pixel. The smoothness prior is Based on available low resolution depth from Kinect rather than image gradients, thus performing better in both textured areas with smooth depth and texture-less areas with depth gradient. We also propose a spatially varying smoothness weight to better handle occlusion areas, and the relative contribution of the two energy terms. We demonstrate how the two sensors can be effectively fused to obtain correct scene depth in ambiguous areas, as well as fine structural details in textured areas.