Robust image, depth, and occlusion generation from uncalibrated stereo

Philips is developing a product line of multi-view auto-stereoscopic 3D displays.(1) For interfacing, the image-plus-depth format is used. Being independent of specific display properties, such as number of views, view mapping on pixel grid, etc., this interface format allows optimal multi-view visualisation of content from many different sources, while maintaining interoperability between display types. A vastly growing number of productions from the entertainment industry are aiming at 3D movie theatres. These productions use a two view format, primarily intended for eye-wear assisted viewing. It has been shown(4) how to convert these sequences into the image-plus-depth format. This results in a single layer depth profile, lacking information about areas that are occluded and can be revealed by the stereoscopic parallax. Recently, it has been shown how to compute for intermediate views for a stereo pair.(4,5) Unfortunately, these approaches are not compatible to the image-plus-depth format, which might hamper the applicability for broadcast 3D television.(3).