Constrained disparity and motion estimators for 3DTV image sequence coding

This paper presents two-dimensional motion estimation methods which take advantage of the intrinsic redundancies inside 3DTV stereoscopic image sequences. Most of the previous studies extract, either disparity vector fields if they are involved in stereovision, or apparent motion vector fields to be applied to motion compensation coding schemes. For 3DTV image sequence analysis and transmission, we can jointly estimate these two feature fields. Locally, initial image data are grouped within two views (the left and right ones) at two successive time samples and spatio-temporal coherence has to be used to enhance motion vector field estimation. Three different levels of 'coherence' have been experimented subject to the crucial assumption that an initial calibration of the stereoscopic sensors provides us with geometric change of coordinates for two matched features.