Patent ID: 6868191

Claim:
A method for computing a fused depth map of a view of an object, comprising: obtaining camera calibration data for a new view of an object; rendering each of a plurality of known depth maps of the object into the new view of the object based on the camera calibration of the new view; and computing the depth map elements of a fused depth map of the new view of the object, wherein each said depth map element corresponds to a pixel in the new view of the object and wherein each said depth map element comprises a median value of a set of rendered depth map elements, corresponding to the pixel, each from one of the plurality of rendered depth maps, said step of computing the depth map elements comprising; for each pixel in the new view of the object, initializing the depth map element of the fused depth map of the new view corresponding to the pixel with the minimum value of the plurality of rendered depth map elements corresponding to the pixel; initializing a support matrix to zero, wherein the support matrix is defined on the domain of the new view of the object; initializing the elements of a next candidate depth map to infinity; for each known depth map rendered into the new view of the object and for each pixel in the new view of the object, initializing a minimum depth map value matrix with the smallest depth map value for each said pixel; decrementing the support matrix at the pixel by one if the pixel is occluded by the rendered depth map; setting the element of the next candidate depth map at the pixel to the corresponding minimum depth map value matrix element if the pixel is not occluded by the rendered depth map and if the corresponding minimum depth map value matrix element corresponding to the pixel is less than the next candidate depth map element corresponding to the pixel; incrementing the support matrix at the pixel by one if the pixel is passed by the rendered depth map; and for each pixel in the new view where the corresponding support matrix element is greater than zero, updating the fused depth map element of the new view with the corresponding next candidate depth map value.