Stereo fusion using a refractive medium on a binocular base

Abstract

The performance of depth reconstruction in binocular stereo relies on how adequate the predefined baseline for a target scene is.Widebaseline stereo is capable of discriminating depth better than the narrow one, but it often suffers from spatial artifacts. Narrow-baseline stereo can provide a more elaborate depth map with less artifacts, while its depth resolution tends to be biased or coarse due to the short disparity. In this paper, we propose a novel optical design of heterogeneous stereo fusion on a binocular imaging system with a refractive medium, where the binocular stereo part operates as wide-baseline stereo; the refractive stereo module works as narrow-baseline stereo. We lidate the performance of our stereo fusion system in measuring depth, compared with homogeneous stereo approaches.