A Stereo Matching Technique using Multi-directional Scan-line Optimization and Reliability-based Hole-filling

Stereo matching techniques are categorized in two major schemes, local and global matching techniques. In global matching schemes, several investigations are introduced, where cost accumulation is performed in multiple matching lines. In this paper, we introduce a new multi-line stereo matching techniques which expands a conventional single-line matching scheme to multiple one. Matching cost is based on simple normalized cross correlation. We expand the scan-line optimization technique to a multi-line scan-line optimization technique. The proposed technique first generates a reliability image, which is iteratively updated based on the previous reliability measure. After some number of iterations, the reliability image is completed by a hole-filling algorithm. The hole-filling algorithm introduces a disparity score table which records the disparity score of the current pixel. The disparity of an empty pixel is determined by comparing the scores of the neighboring pixels. The proposed technique is tested using the Middlebury and CMU stereo images. The error analysis shows that the proposed matching technique yields better performance than using conventional global matching algorithm.