Depth estimation by combining stereo matching and coded aperture

We investigate possible improvements that can be achieved in depth estimation by merging coded apertures and stereo cameras. We analyze several stereo camera setups which are equipped with different sets of coded apertures to explore such possibilities. The demonstrated results of this analysis are encouraging in the sense that coded apertures can provide valuable complementary information to stereo vision based depth estimation in some cases. In addition to that, we take advantage of stereo camera arrangement to have a single shot multiple coded aperture system. We show that with this system, it is possible to extract depth information robustly, by utilizing the inherent relation between the disparity and defocus cues, even for scene regions which are problematic for stereo matching.