Near real-time reliable stereo matching using programmable graphics hardware

A near-real-time stereo matching technique is presented in this paper, which is based on the reliability-based dynamic programming algorithm we proposed earlier. The new algorithm can generate semi-dense disparity maps using only two dynamic programming passes, while our previous approach requires 20-30 passes. We also implement the algorithm on programmable graphics hardware, which further improves the processing speed. The experiments on the four Middlebury stereo datasets show that the new algorithm can produce dense (>85% of the pixels) and reliable (error rate <0.3%) matches in near real-time (0.05-0.1 sec). If needed, it can also be used to generate dense disparity maps. Based on the evaluation conducted by the Middlebury Stereo Vision Research Website, the new algorithm is ranked between the variable window and the graph cuts approaches and currently is the most accurate dynamic programming based technique. When more than one reference images are available, the accuracy can be further improved with little extra computation time.