Effective Removal of Artifacts from Views Synthesized using Depth Image Based Rendering

Depth Image Based Rendering (DIBR), as a free- viewpoint synthesis technique, enables interactive selection of the view for watching. However, many rendering methods based on DIBR usually bring contour, crack and disocclusion artifacts. To address these problems, we propose effective methods to remove these artifacts. Firstly, before warping, the reference depth maps and color images are analyzed to find the regions causing contour artifacts. A combination of depth map edge detection and color consistency correction is applied to the analysis. By omitting warping the found regions, the synthesized views contain no contour artifacts and edges of foreground objects are well preserved. Secondly, cracks are filled using surrounding non- crack pixels rather than filtering for local consistency and smoothness. Thirdly, we apply a method based on texture extrapolation with depth information to inpaint the disocclusions. For two well-known sequences, 'Ballet' and Breakdancers', we obtain large Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) gains in comparison to state-of-the-art techniques. In addition, the proposed method also obtains good results in Structural Similarity Index Measurement (SSIM) and visual quality.