Improving the quality of depth image based rendering for 3D Video systems

In 3D video (3DV) applications, a reduced number of views plus depth maps are transmitted or stored. When there is a need to render virtual views in between the actual views, the technique of depth image based rendering (DIBR) can be used to generate the intermediate views. To address the problem of noisy depth information in 3DV systems, we propose novel methods that can be easily incorporated into DIBR to improve synthesized image quality. These include: (1) a heuristic scheme with adaptive spatting that blends multiple warped reference pixels based on their depth, warped pixel positions and camera parameters; (2) an approximation of the first scheme with up-sampling for fast processing; (3) boundary only splatting; and (4) view weighting based on hole distribution. Experiment results show that the proposed methods can improve synthesis quality significantly.