Real-time stereo matching using memory-efficient belief propagation for high-definition 3D tele-presence systems

Abstract

High-definition 3D video is one of the features that the next generation of telecommunication systems is exploring. Real-time requirements limit the execution time of stereo-vision techniques to 40-60 milliseconds. Classical belief propagation algorithms (BP) generate high quality depth maps. However, the huge number of required memory accesses limits their applicability in real systems. This paper proposes a real-time (latency inferior to 40 millisenconds) highdefinition (1280×720) stereo matching algorithm using belief propagation. There are two main contributions. The first one is an improved BP algorithm with occlusion, potential errors and texture-less handling that outperforms classical multi-grid bipartite-graph BP while reducing the number of memory accesses. The second one is an adaptive message compression technique with low performance penalty that greatly reduces the memory traffic. The combination of these techniques outperforms classical BP by about 6.0% while reducing the memory traffic by more than 90%. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.