Joint Projection Filling method for occlusion handling in Depth-Image-Based Rendering

This paper addresses the disocclusion problem which may occur when using Depth-Image-Based Rendering (DIBR) techniques in 3DTV and Free-Viewpoint TV applications. A new DIBR technique is proposed, which combines three methods: a Joint Projection Filling (JPF) method to handle disocclusions in synthesized depth maps; a backward projection to synthesize virtual views; and a full-Z depth-aided inpainting to fill in disoccluded areas in textures. The JPF method performs the pixels warping for virtual depth map synthesis while making use of an occlusion-compatible pixel ordering strategy, to detect cracks and disocclusions, and to select the pixels to be propagated in the occlusion areas filling process. The full-Z depth-aided inpainting method fills in disocclusions with textures at the correct depth, preserving the boundaries of the objects. Ghosting artifacts, which might otherwise result from pixel projections, are here avoided by introducing a confidence measure on background pixels to be used in the JPF process.