Piece-wise linear function estimation for platelet-based depth maps coding using edge detection

Many researches on efficient depth maps coding issues have been carried out giving particular attention to sharp edge preservation. Platelet-based coding method is an edge-aware coding scheme that uses a segmentation procedure based on recursive quadtree decomposition. Then, the depth map is modeled using piecewise linear platelet and wedgelet functions. However, the estimation of these functions is a computationally expensive task making the platelet-based techniques not adapted to online applications. In this paper, we propose to exploit edge detection in order to reduce the encoding delay of the platelet/wedgelet estimation process. The proposed approach shows significant gain in terms of encoding delay, while providing competitive R-D performances w.r.t. the original platelet-based codec. The subjective evaluation shows significant less degradation along sharp edges.