<title>Dense color stereo</title>

Abstract

ABSTRACT Motivated by the observation that chromatic (color) information is a salient property of surfaces in many natural scenes,we investigate the use of chromatic information in dense stereo correspondence -- a topic which has never been investigated.In this regard, the chromatic photometric constraint, which is used to specify a mathematical optimality criterion for solvingthe dense stereo correspondence problem, is developed. The result is a theoretical construction for developing dense stereo correspondence algorithms which use chromatic information. The efficacy of using chromatic information via thisconstruction is tested by developing a new dense stereo algorithm -- the Dense Color Stereo Algorithm. The results of applying intensity and chromatic versions of the Dense Color Stereo Algorithm to several stereo image pairs demonstrate thatthe use of chromatic information can significantly improve the performance of dense stereo correspondence. These resultscomplement our prior studies of the utility of chromatic information in edge-based stereo correspondence, where it was alsoshown to play a significant role.