Reconstruction of coarse depth estimates using hierarchical image partitions

Abstract

This paper presents a novel depth map enhancement method which takes as inputs a single view and an associated coarse depth estimate. The depth estimate is reconstructed according to the region boundaries proposed within a set of image partitions of the associated view. Image partitions are determined through a color-based region merging procedure and organized within a hierarchy. Novel depth estimates are computed according to plane-fitting procedures using the proposed regions as support and selected coarse depth estimates. The use of partition hierarchies provides an efficient mechanism for evaluating plane-fitting results over various scales and, in this way, reduce the dependency of the results on the quality of a single color-based segmentation. Experimental results on publicly available test sequences illustrate the potential of the algorithm in significantly improving low quality depth estimates.