Superpixel-based depth map enhancement and hole filling for view interpolation

In view interpolation, information missing often exists in initial depth map, moreover, disocclusion regions usually occur along the foreground object boundaries after 3D warping. Generally, initial depth map and warped depth map have a strong influence on the performance of view interpolation. However, most of existing view interpolation algorithms only emphasize hole filling of the warped color image. In this paper, a superpixel-based method is proposed for initial depth map enhancement and warped depth map hole filling. Firstly, the color image is segmented using simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC) algorithm, and after that, the associated depth map is segmented with the same label. Then, the depth-missing pixels are recovered by considering color and depth superpixel information jointly. Additionally, holes of the disocclusion regions in the warped depth map can also be filled efficiently via superpixel-based segmentation. Experimental results show that with the proposed method the quality of the interpolated view has been improved significantly in terms of both subjective and objective evaluations.