Patent Document ID: 20150049916
Application ID: 14526392
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of estimating distances to objects within a scene based upon a set of images captured from different viewpoints using a processor configured by an image processing application, the method comprising: selecting a viewpoint of an image from the set of images captured from different viewpoints as a reference viewpoint; normalizing the set of images to increase the similarity of corresponding pixels within the set of images; determining depth estimates for pixel locations in an image from the reference viewpoint using at least a subset of the set of images, wherein generating a depth estimate for a given pixel location in the image from the reference viewpoint comprises: identifying pixels in the at least a subset of the set of images that correspond to the given pixel location in the image from the reference viewpoint based upon expected disparity at a plurality of depths; comparing the similarity of the corresponding pixels identified at each of the plurality of depths; and selecting the depth from the plurality of depths at which the identified corresponding pixels have the highest degree of similarity as a depth estimate for the given pixel location in the image from the reference viewpoint; determining the visibility of the pixels in the set of images from the reference viewpoint by comparing the photometric similarity of pixels from the set of images corresponding to a given pixel in the image from the set of images captured from the reference viewpoint, where pixels from the set of images that correspond to a given pixel are determined based upon the depth estimate determined for the given pixel; and fusing pixels from the set of images based upon the depth estimates to create a fused image having a resolution that is greater than the resolutions of the images in the set of images by: identifying the pixels from the set of images that are visible in an image from the reference viewpoint using the visibility information; applying scene dependent geometric shifts to the pixels from the set of images that are visible in an image from the reference viewpoint to shift the pixels into the reference viewpoint, where the scene dependent geometric shifts are determined using the depth estimates; and fusing the shifted pixels from the set of images to create a fused image from the reference viewpoint having a resolution that is greater than the resolutions of the images in the set of images.