Patent ID: 7324687

Claim:
A computer-implemented process for computing a 3D reconstruction of a scene from multiple images thereof which were captured from different viewpoints, comprising using a computer to perform the following process actions: segmenting each image into segments representing regions of the image whose pixels are likely to exhibit similar disparities; computing an initial disparity space distribution (DSD) for each segment of each image using an assumption that all pixels within a segment have the same disparity, wherein the initial DSD for a segment comprises an initial estimate of probability that the pixels of the segment exhibit a particular disparity for each of a set of candidate disparities; refining the initial estimates of the disparity probabilities of the initial DSD for each segment of each image by simultaneously enforcing a smoothness constraint between neighboring segments within the same image and a consistency constraint between corresponding segments in the other images that depict the same portion of the scene to produce a refined DSD; for each segment in each image, assigning the disparity corresponding to the maximum probability value in the refined DSD of the segment to each pixel of the segment; and for each image, smoothing the disparity values assigned to each pixel based on the disparities of corresponding pixels in the other images that depict the same portion of the scene and then based on the disparity values of neighboring pixels within the same segment of the image.