Coding depth images with piecewise linear functions for multi-view synthesis

An efficient way to transmit multi-view images is to send the texture image together with a corresponding depth-map. The depth-map specifies the distance between each pixel and the camera. With this information, arbitrary views can be generated at the decoder. This technique requires a compression technique for the depth-maps. Ordinary image compression algorithms like JPEG provide low quality, since the ringing artifacts along edges generate clouds of pixels in 3D space. For this reason, we propose a new algorithm for the coding of depth maps that uses piecewise linear functions to approximate the depth information. This algorithm shows no degradation along discontinuities and it provides a high compression factor with bit-rates as low as 0.05 bit/pixel.