Intermediate view synthesis algorithm using mesh clustering for rectangular multiview camera system

Abstract

A multiview video-based three-dimensional (3-D) video system offers a realistic impression and a free view navigation to the user. The efficient compression and intermediate view synthesis are key technologies since 3-D video systems deal multiple views. We propose an intermediate view synthesis using a rectangular multiview camera system that is suitable to realize 3-D video systems. The rectangular multiview camera system not only can offer free view navigation both horizontally and vertically but also can employ three reference views such as left, right, and bottom for intermediate view synthesis. The proposed view synthesis method first represents the each reference view to meshes and then finds the best disparity for each mesh element by using the stereo matching between reference views. Before stereo matching, we separate the virtual image to be synthesized into several regions to enhance the accuracy of disparities. The mesh is classified into foreground and background groups by disparity values and then affine transformed. By experiments, we confirm that the proposed method synthesizes a high-quality image and is suitable for 3-D video systems.