Depth Image Sequences Compression Using Programmable Graphics Hardware

Depth image-based representation (DIMR) has recently been adopted into MPEG-4 Animation Framework eXtension (AFX). However, how to compress depth image sequences is not addressed. In this paper, we discuss the compression of the depth image sequences. Since depth maps should be kept accurate for many application scenarios, they are compressed losslessly using run-length like coding scheme. One warping-based 3D motion estimation and compensation method is proposed for the compression of the color images. Using this method, motion estimation and compensation can be integrated into one-pass process and computed by executing short vertex program on programmable graphics hardware installed on most PCs. Since the residual frames can be treated as natural images, wavelet coding technique is employed to do intra and interframe compression. Experimental result shows that our color images coder outperforms MPEG-2 around 3dB at bit rate of 2M bps.