Hierarchical Block-Based Disparity Estimation Considering Neighbourhood Constraints

A block–based isparity estimation approach is pres ented that increases the robustness of the estimator by considering neighbourhood constraints and by esti mating hierarchically on a multi–resolutional image pyramid of a stereoscopic image pair . This approach is applied to 3–D reconstruction of moving scenes in the field of 3–D video communications and to land scape and architectural reconstruction. The shape of the reconstructed objects, which is computed from the estimated disparities, is significantly improved using the presented approach compared to conven tional block–matching.