View Synthesis and Coding of Multi-view Data in Arbitrary Camera Arrangements Using Multiple Layered Depth Images

In this paper, we propose a new view synthesis technique for coding of multi-view color and depth data in arbitrary camera arrangements. We treat each camera position as a 3-D point in world coordinates and build clusters of those vertices. Color and depth data within a cluster are gathered into one camera position using a hierarchical representation based on the concept of layered depth image (LDI). Since one camera can cover only a limited viewing range, we set multiple reference cameras so that multiple LDIs are generated to cover the whole viewing range. Therefore, we can enhance the visual quality of the reconstructed views from multiple LDIs comparing with that from a single LDI. From experimental results, the proposed scheme shows better coding performance under arbitrary camera configurations in terms of PSNR and subjective visual quality.