Efficient Disparity Map Generation Using Stereo and Time-of-Flight Depth Cameras

Three-dimensional content (3D) creation has received a lot of attention due to numerous successes of 3D entertainment. Accurate estimation of depth information is necessary for efficient 3D content creation. In this paper, we propose a disparity map estimation method based on stereo correspondence. The proposed system utilizes depth and stereo camera sets. While the stereo set carries out disparity estimation, depth camera information is projected to left and right camera positions using 3D warping and upsampling is processed in accordance with the image size. The upsampled depth is used for obtaining disparity data of left and right positions. Finally, disparity data from each depth sensor are combined. The experimental results demonstrate that our method produces more accurate disparity maps compared to the conventional approaches which use stereo cameras and a single depth sensor.