Method and apparatus for determining disparity of texture

• US 8,666,144 B2
• Filed: 02/10/2011
• Issued: 03/04/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/02/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Golden Edge Holding Corporation
• Original Assignee: Edge Technologies, Inc
• Inventors: El Dokor, Tarek, King, Joshua, Cluster, Jordan, Holmes, James Edward
• Primary Examiner(s): Rush, Eric
• Application Number:
  US13/025,070
• Publication Number:
  US 20120206573A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,118 Days
• Field of Search: 382/100, 382/103, 382/154, 382/282, 382/293, 382/294, 345/419, 348/42
• US Class Current: 382/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2200/28 involving image processing hardware
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10021 Stereoscopic video; Stereoscopic image sequence
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10024 Color image
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/40 Analysis of texture depth or shape recovery from texture G06T7/529
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/593 from stereo images
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/106 Processing image signals for multi-view video sequence encoding H04N19/597
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/128 Adjusting depth or disparity
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/239 using two 2D image sensors having a relative position equal to or related to the interocular distance H04N13/243 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/271 wherein the generated image signals comprise depth maps or disparity maps
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2013/0081 Depth or disparity estimation from stereoscopic image signals

Abstract

A method and system to determine the disparity associated with one or more textured regions of a plurality of images is presented. The method comprises the steps of breaking up the texture into its color primitives, further segmenting the textured object into any number of objects comprising such primitives, and then calculating a disparity of these objects. The textured objects emerge in the disparity domain, after having their disparity calculated. Accordingly, the method is further comprised of defining one or more textured regions in a first of a plurality of images, determining a corresponding one or more textured regions in a second of the plurality of images, segmenting the textured regions into their color primitives, and calculating a disparity between the first and second of the plurality of images in accordance with the segmented color primitives.

Claims

1. A system for generating a disparity map, comprising:

a stereo camera for acquiring right and left images at a first time and corresponding right and left images at a second time; and

a processor for defining one or more textured regions in one of the right and left images acquired at the first time, segmenting the one or more textured regions into their color primitives, determining a corresponding one or more segmented textured regions in the other of the right and left images acquired at the first time, calculating a disparity between the segmented textured regions in the first and second right and left images acquired at the first time in accordance with the segmented color primitives;

generating a first disparity map based upon the calculated disparity, determining one or more objects that change position between one of the left and right images acquired at the first time and a corresponding one of the left and right images acquired at the second time by calculating a difference result, the difference result being calculated only for segments determined to be temporally unstable, such difference result being stored in a compressed format, generating disparity map update segments corresponding to the objects, and combining the first disparity map and the disparity map update segments.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is further adapted to combine the first disparity map and the disparity map update segments by determining a three-dimensional position of the objects in the left and right images acquired at the second time, and replacing these positions in the first disparity map with the corresponding disparity map update segments.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the objects comprise portions of an image that have changed.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein a bit size of an image used for storing the difference results is dependent upon the number of disparity levels employed.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the bit size of the image is dependent upon the number of disparity levels employed.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

combining one or more determined temporally unstable segments with one or more temporally stable segments; and

re-computing disparity based upon the combined segments.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising the steps of

combining one or more determined temporally unstable segments with one or more temporally stable segments;

and

assigning a disparity of one of the segments to the combined segment.