Depth Estimation from Stereoscopic Image Pairs Assuming Piecewise Continuos Surfaces

An algorithm for estimating reliable and accurate depth maps from stereoscopic image pairs is presented, which is based on block-atching techniques for disparity estimation. By taking neighboring disparity values into account, reliability and accuracy of the estimated disparity values are increased and the corona effect at disparity discontinuities is avoided. An interpolation of disparity values within segmented regions of homogeneous disparity enables the computation of dense depth maps by means of triangulation.