<p>Many different approaches have been taken towards solving the stereo correspondence problem and great progress has been made within the field during the last decade. This is mainly thanks to newly evolved global optimization techniques and better ways to compute pixel dissimilarity between views. The most successful algorithms are based on approaches that explicitly model smoothness assumptions made about the physical world, with image segmentation and plane fitting being two frequently used techniques.</p><p>Within the project, a survey of state of the art stereo algorithms was conducted and the theory behind them is explained. Techniques found interesting were implemented for experimental trials and an algorithm aiming to achieve state of the art performance was implemented and evaluated. For several cases, state of the art performance was reached.</p><p>To keep down the computational complexity, an algorithm relying on local winner-take-all optimization, image segmentation and plane fitting was compared against minimizing a global energy function formulated on pixel level. Experiments show that the local approach in several cases can match the global approach, but that problems sometimes arise – especially when large areas that lack texture are present. Such problematic areas are better handled by the explicit modeling of smoothness in global energy minimization.</p><p>Lastly, disparity estimation for image sequences was explored and some ideas on how to use temporal information were implemented and tried. The ideas mainly relied on motion detection to determine parts that are static in a sequence of frames. Stereo correspondence for sequences is a rather new research field, and there is still a lot of work to be made.</p>

Cette thèse propose de nouvelles approches pour le calcul de cartes de profondeur associées à deux images stéréoscopiques.La difficulté du problème réside dans l'établissement de mises en correspondances entre les deux images stéréoscopiques. Cet établissement s'avère en effet incertain dans les zones de l'image qui sont homogènes, voire impossible en cas d'occultation.Afin de gérer ces deux problèmes, nos méthodes procèdent en deux étapes. Tout d'abord nous cherchons des mesures de profondeur fiables en comparant les deux images stéréoscopiques à l'aide de leurs segmentations associées. L'analyse des coûts de superpositions d'images, sur une base régionale et au travers d'échelles multiples, nous permet de réaliser des agrégations de coûts pertinentes, desquelles nous déduisons des mesures de disparités précises. De plus, cette analyse facilite la détection des zones de l'image de référence étant potentiellement occultées dans l’autre image de la paire stéréoscopique. Dans un deuxième temps, un mécanisme d'estimation se charge de trouver les profondeurs les plus plausibles, là où aucune mise en correspondance n'a pu être établie.L'ouvrage est scindé en deux parties : la première permettra au lecteur de se familiariser avec les problèmes fréquemment observés en analyse d'images stéréoscopiques. Il y trouvera également une brève introduction au traitement d'images morphologique. Dans une deuxième partie, nos opérateurs de calcul de profondeur sont présentés, détaillés et évalués. / In this thesis, we introduce new approaches dedicated to the computation of depth maps associated with a pair of stereo images.The main difficulty of this problem resides in the establishment of correspondences between the two stereoscopic images. Indeed, it is difficult to ascertain the relevance of matches occurring in homogeneous areas, whilst matches are infeasible for pixels occluded in one of the stereo views.In order to handle these two problems, our methods are composed of two steps. First, we search for reliable depth measures, by comparing the two images of the stereo pair with the help of their associated segmentations. The analysis of image superimposition costs, on a regional basis and across multiple scales, allows us to perform relevant cost aggregations, from which we deduce accurate disparity measures. Furthermore, this analysis facilitates the detection of the reference image areas, which are potentially occluded in the other image of the stereo pair. Second, an interpolation mechanism is devoted to the estimation of depth values, where no correspondence could have been established.The manuscript is divided into two parts: the first will allow the reader to become familiar with the problems and issues frequently encountered when analysing stereo images. A brief introduction to morphological image processing is also provided. In the second part, our algorithms to the computation of depth maps are introduced, detailed and evaluated.

Many different approaches have been taken towards solving the stereo correspondence problem and great progress has been made within the field during the last decade. This is mainly thanks to newly evolved global optimization techniques and better ways to compute pixel dissimilarity between views. The most successful algorithms are based on approaches that explicitly model smoothness assumptions made about the physical world, with image segmentation and plane fitting being two frequently used techniques. Within the project, a survey of state of the art stereo algorithms was conducted and the theory behind them is explained. Techniques found interesting were implemented for experimental trials and an algorithm aiming to achieve state of the art performance was implemented and evaluated. For several cases, state of the art performance was reached. To keep down the computational complexity, an algorithm relying on local winner-take-all optimization, image segmentation and plane fitting was compared against minimizing a global energy function formulated on pixel level. Experiments show that the local approach in several cases can match the global approach, but that problems sometimes arise – especially when large areas that lack texture are present. Such problematic areas are better handled by the explicit modeling of smoothness in global energy minimization. Lastly, disparity estimation for image sequences was explored and some ideas on how to use temporal information were implemented and tried. The ideas mainly relied on motion detection to determine parts that are static in a sequence of frames. Stereo correspondence for sequences is a rather new research field, and there is still a lot of work to be made.