Robust depth enhancement and optimization based on advanced multilateral filters

Stereo matching of two distanced cameras and structured-light RGB-D cameras are the two common ways to capture the depth map, which conveys the per-pixel depth information of the image. However, the results with mismatched and occluded pixels would not provide accurately well-matched depth and image information. The mismatched depth-image relations would degrade the performances of view syntheses seriously in modern-day three-dimension video applications. Therefore, how to effectively utilize the image and depth to enhance themselves becomes more and more important. In this paper, we propose an advanced multilateral filter (AMF), which refers spatial, range, depth, and credibility information to achieve their enhancements. The AMF enhancements could sharpen the image, suppress noisy depth, filling depth holes, and sharpen the depth edges simultaneously. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method provides a superior performance, especially around the object boundary.