Stereo Matching - State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges

Stereo matching denotes the problem of finding dense correspondences in pairs of images in order to perform 3D reconstruction. In this chapter, we provide a review of stereo methods with a focus on recent developments and our own work. We start with a discussion of local methods and introduce our algorithms: geodesic stereo, cost filtering and PatchMatch stereo. Although local algorithms have recently become very popular, they are not capable of handling large untextured regions where a global smoothness prior is required. In the discussion of such global methods, we briefly describe standard optimization techniques. However, the real problem is not in the optimization, but in finding an energy function that represents a good model of the stereo problem. In this context, we investigate data and smoothness terms of standard energies to find the best-suited implementations of which. We then describe our own work on finding a good model. This includes our combined stereo and matting approach, Surface Stereo, Object Stereo as well as a new method that incorporates physics-based reasoning in stereo matching.