A fast and effective stereo matching method-implementation aspects

An edge-based, fast and effective stereo matching method is proposed, which is characterized by two matching steps: initial and directed matching. In the initial matching a standard epipolar constraint and local geometrical and area constraints are applied among edge segments to reduce the search space. Then the directed matching proceeds under the guidance of an edge-connectivity relational graph which represents the structural relationship among edge segments. By using a heuristic labelling technique the combinational search is greatly reduced in the matching process. The implementation and results are presented to show the efficacy of the proposed stereo matching method