Stereo disparity measurement for binocular stereo video systems

This paper reports the development of a stereo disparity measurement system by the binocular video camera. The system uses a simple optical configuration such that raster lines of the right and left cameras share the same vertical position. This allows 1D search along the raster scan line to match local patterns in the RGB color space. In order to deal with the occlusion, a strategy to minimize the number of line crossings among the lines connecting the pixel points in the right and left raster lines. Small disparity for a large distance to the object necessitates subpixel stereo matching. A method based on the phase-only cross correlation was incorporated. The system was developed for the Windows platform using Visual C++ and videoOCX library. The system is capable of displaying dense disparity maps continuously at a lower video rate.