A depth estimation method for edge precision improvement of depth map

To improve the depth estimation precision at the object edges, a novel depth estimation method is proposed in this paper. In the proposed method, based on the depth characteristics of the object edges, the pixels in the image are firstly classified into three categories, and then the corresponding smoothness cost functions are derived. With the modified smoothness cost functions, the depth value at the object edges with high quality can be obtained using the proposed depth estimation method. Compared with the existing depth estimation methods for the free-viewpoint television (FTV) system, the experimental results have shown that the proposed method can greatly improve the depth estimation precision for the object edges and guarantee the correctness of the edges in the synthesized virtual view at the receiver of the FTV system.