Real-time stereo vision using semi-global matching on programmable graphics hardware

Extracting depth information from pairs of stereo images in real-time allows interactive 3d operations on live video streams. We present a novel adaptation of the Semi-Global Matching (SGM) Algorithm [Hirschmüller 2005] to graphics processing (GPU) hardware, which operates in real-time and frees the CPU for other tasks. We also present shaders which use the extracted depth information to manipulate the video stream in real time.