User assisted stereo image retargetting

The wide availability of stereoscopic 3D TVs and mobile displays created a considerable market for content producers. This opened a new phase for researchers to study on methods to alter and process the content for various purposes. This study concentrates on user assisted disparity remapping for stereo image footage. The disparity of an object of interest is altered while leaving the remaining scene unattended. This application is useful in the sense that it provides a method for emphasizing/de-emphasizing an object on the scene by adjusting its depth with respect to the camera. The proposed technique can also be used as a post processing step for retargeting stereoscopic footage on different display sizes and resolutions. The proposed technique involves an MRF based energy minimization step for interactive stereo image segmentation, where user assistance on just one of the stereo pairs is required for determining the location of stereo object pair. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the generated segments and the disparity adjusted images prove the functionality and superiority of the proposed technique.