Abstract:

Depth map images are characterized by large homogeneous areas and strong edges. It has been observed that efficient compression of the depth map is achieved by applying a down-sampling operation prior to encoding. However, since high resolution depth maps are typically required for view synthesis, an up-sampling method that is able to recover the loss of information is needed within this framework. In this paper, an up-sampling algorithm that recovers the high frequency content of depth maps using a novel edge layer concept is proposed. This algorithm includes a method for extracting edge layers from the corresponding texture images, which are then used as part of a non-linear interpolation filter for depth map upsampling. In the present work, the up-sampling is applied as a post-processing operation to generate multiview output for display. Views synthesized with our up-sampled depth maps show the efficiency of our proposed technique relative to conventional interpolation filters.