Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Angewandten Forschung E.v.

Peter Kauff

Oliver Schreer

Peter Eisert

Marcus Bernd Mueller

Ingo Feldmann

Wolfgang Waizenegger

Frederik Zilly

Christian Riechert

Nicole Atzpadin

Thomas Wiegand

Detlev Marpe

Christian Weissig

Arne Finn

Ralf Tanger

Nicola Michael Gutberlet

Joachim Schuessler

Marcus MÜLLER

An apparatus for performing 3D estimation on the basis of pictures of at least two different views includes a hypotheses provider, a similarity measure calculator, and a 3D information determiner. The hypotheses provider locally determines 3D information hypotheses for positions of a current picture of a first view on the basis of a pre-estimate which associates a 3D information estimate to each position of a picture of the first view. The similarity measure calculator calculates, for each position of the current picture of the first view, a hypotheses of the respective position by measuring a similarity between a region similarity measure for each of the 3D information of the current picture of the first view at the respective position and a corresponding region of a second view at a position displaced relative to the respective position by a respective 3D information hypothesis. The 3D information determiner selects, for each position of the first view, the 3D information hypothesis of highest similarity measure.

Apparatus and method for performing 3D estimation based on locally determined 3D information hypotheses

A method for generating 3D-information from multiple images showing a 3D scene from multiple perspectives has: providing at least two hypotheses for the 3D-information; performing a multi-hypotheses test by matching the at least two hypotheses to the multiple images and determining a test-result hypothesis that fulfills a particular matching criterion; updating the test-result hypothesis by varying a parameter set of the test-result hypothesis to further improve the matching criterion or another criterion; and determining the 3D-information on the basis of the parameter set of a resulting hypothesis provided by the action of updating the test-result hypothesis. A corresponding computer readable digital storage medium and a 3D-information generator are also described. Further embodiments perform a correspondence analysis between projections of spatio-temporal objects (STO) in multiple images to select a particular spatio-temporal object on the basis of said correspondence analysis.

Hybrid recursive analysis of spatio-temporal objects

A better basis for a further processing such as virtual view rendering, in form of a disparity map is achieved. To this end, the disparity map generation is done in two separate steps, namely the generation of two depth/disparity map estimates based on two different pairs of views of the scene in a manner independent from each other, with then comparing both depth/disparity map estimates so as to obtain a reliability measure for one or both of the depth/disparity map estimates.

Disparity map generation including reliability estimation

A virtual camera pose determiner is configured to determine a position and an orientation of a virtual camera. The position of the virtual camera is determined on the basis of a display position of a displayed representation of a remote participant on a display. The orientation of the virtual camera is determined on the basis of a geometrical relation between the display position of the remote participant on the display, and a position of a local participant. The virtual camera is configured to transmit an image or a sequence of images to the remote participant, so that an image provided by the virtual camera has the view on the local participant as is if viewed from the display position. Further embodiments provide a video communication system having a virtual camera pose determiner for providing a virtual camera pose on basis of the display position and the position of the local participant.

View rendering for the provision of virtual eye contact using special geometric constraints in combination with eye-tracking

A provision of high quality panoramic or semi-panoramic 3D scenes is achieved at reasonable efforts by arranging the plurality of camera pairs, each of which is associated with a respective one of mirror plane surfaces of a pyramid or clipped-pyramid shaped mirror in that same is directed towards the respective associated mirror plane surface, such that for each camera pair the virtual positions of pivot points of the cameras of the respective camera pair are offset from each other along a straight baseline which, in turn, is offset from the axis of the mirror, and a distance between virtual points of a left-hand channel camera of a first camera pair associated with a first mirror plane surface and a right-hand channel camera of a second camera pair associated with a second mirror plane surface positioned neighboring the first mirror plane surface, deviates from a length of the baselines of the camera pairs by less than 10% of the length of the baselines.

Capturing panoramic or semi-panoramic 3D scenes

A filter structure for filtering a disparity map includes a first filter, a second filter, and a filter selector. The first filter is for filtering a contemplated section of the disparity map according to a first measure of central tendency. The second filter is for filtering the contemplated section of the disparity maps according to a second measure of central tendency. The filter selector is provided for selecting the first filter or the second filter for filtering the contemplated section of the disparity map, the selection being based on at least one local property of the contemplated section. A corresponding method for filtering a disparity map includes determining a local property of the contemplated section and selecting a filter. The contemplated section is then filtered using the first filter or the second filter depending on a result of the selection.

Spatio-temporal disparity-map smoothing by joint multilateral filtering

An apparatus for estimating a disparity map based on at least two images is provided. The apparatus includes at least two processing units, which include a pixel recursion unit configured to determine a disparity value as a pixel recursion disparity candidate based on a plurality of pixel values of the at least two images and a selector configured to select a selected disparity candidate to determine at least one of the disparity map values of the disparity map. The selector is adapted to select the selected disparity candidate from a candidate group assigned to the selector. The candidate group assigned to the selector includes the pixel recursion disparity candidate, a second disparity candidate and a third disparity candidate. Moreover, the selector is adapted to select the selected disparity candidate independently from a different selector of a different processing unit of the at least two processing units.

Apparatus and method for real-time capable disparity estimation for virtual view rendering suitable for multi-threaded execution

The present invention is based on the finding that pictures or a picture stream can be encoded highly efficient when a representation of pictures is chosen that is having different picture blocks, wherein each picture block is carrying picture information for picture areas smaller than the full area of the picture and when the different picture blocks are carrying the picture information either in a first color-space representation or in a second color-space-representation. Since different color-space-representations have individual inherent properties with respect to their describing parameters, choosing an appropriate color-space-representation individually for the picture blocks results in an encoded representation of pictures that is having a better quality at a given size or bit rate.

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Berlin, Germany

Peter Kauff