Depth extraction using lateral or axial camera motion: an integration of depth from motion and stereo

We present an integrated methodology that can be used to extract the depth from a sequence of images. The method combines the ability of stereo processing to acquire highly accurate depth measurements and the efficiency of spatial and temporal gradient analysis. As a result of this integration, depth measurements of a high quality are obtained at a speed approximately ten-times higher than that of stereo processing. Without any a priori information of the locations of the points in the scene, the correspondence problem in stereo processing is computationally expensive. In our approach, we use the spatial and temporal gradient analysis, which has been shown to provide the depth with a high efficiency but limited accuracy, to guide the stereo matching process. Experiments for lateral and axial camera translations have acquired depth results with a mean error of less than 3 percent