Experimental study of image representation spaces in variational disparity calculation

Correspondence techniques start from the assumption, based on the Lambertian reflection model, that the apparent brightness of a surface is independent of the observer’s angle of view. From this, a grey value constancy assumption is derived, which states that a change in brightness of a particular image pixel is proportional to a change in its position. This constancy assumption can be extended directly for vector valued images, such as RGB. It is clear that the grey value constancy assumption does not hold for surfaces with a non-Lambertian behaviour and, therefore, the underlying image representation is crucial when using real image sequences under varying lighting conditions and noise from the imaging device. In order for the correspondence methods to produce good, temporally coherent results, properties such as robustness to noise, illumination invariance, and stability with respect to small geometrical deformations are all desired properties of the representation. In this article, we study how different image representation spaces complement each other and how the chosen representations benefit from the combination in terms of both robustness and accuracy. The model used for establishing the correspondences, based on the calculus of variations, is itself considered robust. However, we show that considerable improvements are possible, especially in the case of real image sequences, by using an appropriate image representation. We also show how optimum (or near optimum) parameters, related to each representation space, can be efficiently found.