Patent ID: 8385628

Claim:
An image encoding method of determining a standard viewpoint, and encoding an image of a viewpoint other than the standard viewpoint by using an already-encoded image of the standard viewpoint, so as to encode multi-viewpoint images, the method comprising: a global parallax data determination step of estimating and determining global parallax data which provides parallax between a reference standard viewpoint image, which is the already-encoded image of the standard viewpoint, and all images of viewpoints other than the standard viewpoint, based on the Epipolar geometry constraint; a global parallax data encoding step of encoding the determined global parallax data; a base parallax data determination step of converting the determined global parallax data into base parallax data which provides parallax between each target viewpoint image for encoding, which has a viewpoint other than the standard viewpoint, and all the other viewpoints, based on the Epipolar geometry constraint; a correction parallax data determination step of determining correction parallax data defined as the difference between the base parallax data and parallax data which provides parallax between the target viewpoint image and an already-encoded reference viewpoint image used in parallax compensation performed when encoding the target viewpoint image; a correction parallax data encoding step of encoding the correction parallax data; and a viewpoint image encoding step of encoding the target viewpoint image while performing the parallax compensation from the reference viewpoint image by using corresponding point data provided by the base parallax data and the correction parallax data.