Patent ID: 7098998

Claim:
A depth measuring apparatus comprising: an attribute-based searching section for acquiring a corresponding point in a second image, based on an attribute of a point of interest in a first image; a depth computing section for computing a depth value of the point of interest for which the corresponding point is acquired, by applying the principle of triangulation; a depth interpolating section for computing the depth value of the point of interest for which a corresponding point is not acquired, by interpolation from the depth values of a plurality of points of interest for each of which the depth value is determined; a provisional corresponding point acquiring section for determining a provisional corresponding point for the point of interest for which a corresponding point is not acquired, from the computed depth value; a corresponding point re-computing section for executing region-based search limited to the neighborhood of the provisional corresponding point so as to acquire a more accurate corresponding point than the provisional corresponding point, wherein said depth computing section computes the depth value for the point of interest for which the more accurate corresponding point is acquired by said corresponding point re-computing section.