A three camera approach for calculating disparity and synthesizing intermediate pictures

The authors present a method for stereo analysis and picture synthesis which allows the calculation of intermediate pictures from a virtual camera in a position between three actual cameras. Determining the depth (disparities) is the focal point. They describe a segment-matching method for determining them which uses the principle of maximal cliques and performs a motion estimation for picture sequences. This procedure can achieve the data reduction necessary for a 3D-TV system. Synthesized intermediate pictures from natural scenes are shown.