Patent ID: 8854425

Claim:
A method, operable in a processor, said method propagating depth-related information from a first depth-map associated with a first image to a second depth-map associated with a second image, the first and second image being temporally proximate images in an image sequence, the method comprising: generating an intermediate depth-map associated with the second image by propagating depth values from the first depth-map to the intermediate depth-map using pixels of the first image and the second image, wherein generating the intermediate depth-map comprises: calculation of a depth value in the intermediate depth-map by means of a weighted addition of depth values from the first depth-map using weight factors determined based on a non-linear function of a difference between at least one pixel from the first image and at least one corresponding pixel from the second image, both pixels in spatial proximity of the respective depth-related information being propagated; generating a reliability measure (R) for a depth value in the intermediate depth-map, generating a motion vector using information comprising depth values in a spatial region around a first location in the first depth-map and depth values in a spatial region around a second location in the intermediate depth-map, said spatial region around the second location having a high correlation with the spatial region around the first location; and generating a depth value for the second location in the second depth-map using information comprising the motion vector, and the reliability measure, wherein said reliability measure determines selection of one of: elements of the first depth map, elements of the intermediate depth map and a blend of elements of the first depth map and the second depth map.