Fast and Efficient Dense Variational Stereo on GPU

Thanks to their high performance and programmability, the latest graphics cards can now be used for scientific purpose. They are indeed very efficient parallel single instruction multiple data (SIMD) machines. This new trend is called general purpose computation on graphics processing unit (GPGPU). Regarding the stereo problem, variational methods based on deformable models provide dense, smooth and accurate results. Nevertheless, they prove to be slower than usual disparity-based approaches. In this paper, we present a dense stereo algorithm, handling occlusions, using three cameras as inputs and entirely implemented on a graphics processing unit (GPU). Experimental speedups prove that our approach is efficient and perfectly adapted to the GPU, leading to nearly video frame rate reconstruction.