TR-A-0154 :1992.10.20

Masahiko Shizawa

Direct Estimation of Multiple Disparities for Transparent Multiple Surfaces in Binocular Stereo

Abstract:A closed-form single-shot stereo disparity estimation algorithm is proposed that can compute multiple disparities due to transparency directly from signal differences and variations on epipolar lines of a binocular image pair. The transparent stereo constraint equations have been derived by using a novel mathematical technique, the principle of superposition. A computationally tractable single-shot algorithm is derived by using the first-order approximation of the constraint equations with respect to disparities. The algorithm can compute multiple dispatities from only two images in contrast to the previous results for motion transparency that needed at least n+1 frames for n simultaneous motion estimates. The derived algorithm can be viewed as the SSD(sum of squared differences) for signal matching extended to deal with multiple disparities. However, the constraint is not dedicated solely to SSD method and several other implementations are possible. These possibilities are also discussed in this paper.