Object based coding of the depth maps for 3D video coding

The emergence of three dimensional (3D) video applications, based on depth image based rendering (DIBR) has brought up more requirements of bandwidth, due to the need of depth information. This additional bandwidth requirement need to be tackled to enable the widespread of 3D video applications based on DIBR. Exploiting visual correlations between the color image and the depth image, in depth image coding, will reduce the requirement of high bandwidth required to transmit the additional depth information. In this paper, an object based depth image coding technique is presented which is suitable for low bit rate 3D-TV applications that are based on depth image based rendering. The proposed method achieves at most 50% bit rate reduction at low bit rates.