Virtual View Synthesis Based on DIBR and Image Inpainting

In 3DTV research, virtual view synthesis is a key component to the technology. Depth-image-based-rendering (DIBR) is an important method to realize virtual view synthesis. However, DIBR always results in hole problems where the depth and colour values are not known. Hole-filling methods often cause other problems, such as edge-ghosting and cracks. This paper proposes an algorithm that uses the depth and colour images to address the holes. It exploits the assumption of a virtual view between two laterally aligned reference cameras. The hole-filling method is performed on the blended depth image by morphological operations, and inpainting of the holes is obtained with the position information provided by the filtered depth maps. A new interpolation method to eliminate edge-ghosting is also presented, which additionally uses a post-processing technique to improve image quality. The main novelty of this paper is the unique image blending, which is more efficient than pre-processing depth maps. It is also the first method that is using morphological closing in the depth map de-noising process. The method proposed in this paper can effectively remove holes and edge-ghosting. Experimental quantitative and qualitative results show the proposed algorithm improves quality dramatically on traditional methods.