Combining defocus and photoconsistency for depth map estimation in 3D integral imaging

Abstract

This paper presents the application of a depth estimation method for scenes acquired using a Synthetic Aperture Integral Imaging (SAII) technique. SAII is an autostereoscopic technique consisting of an array of cameras that acquires images from different perspectives. The depth estimation method combines a defocus and a correspondence measure. This approach obtains consistent results and shows noticeable improvement in the depth estimation as compared to a minimum variance minimisation strategy, also tested in our scenes. Further improvements are obtained for both methods when they are fed into a regularisation approach that takes into account the depth in the spatial neighbourhood of a pixel.