Patent Document ID: 20040109585
Application ID: 10315291
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of generating a dynamic depth map of a scene from a sequence of sets of segmented images of the scene, including a current set of segmented images and a prior set of segmented images, each set of segmented images representing a plurality of different views of the scene at a respective instant, wherein each image in each set of segmented images includes a respective coordinate set. the method comprising the steps of: a) determining a temporal correspondence between segments in at least one image in the current set of segmented images and corresponding segments in at least one image of the prior set of segmented images to obtain a temporal depth predicted value for each segment in the current set of segmented images; b) determining a spatial correspondence among segments in the current set of segmented images to obtain a spatial depth predicted value for each segment in at least one image of the current set of images; c) for each segment in the at least one image of the current set of segmented images, selecting one of the temporal depth predicted value and the spatial depth predicted value as an initial depth estimate of the segment; d) generating a measure of difference between the at least one image in the current set of segmented images and each other image in the current set of segmented images; e) repeating steps c) and d) selecting different initial depth values until a minimum measure of difference is generated in step d).