Modeling foreshortening in stereo vision using local spatial frequency

Abstract

Many aspects of the real world continue to plague stereo matching systems. One of these is perspective foreshortening, an effect that occurs when a surface is viewed at a sharp angle. Because each stereo camera has a slightly different view, the image of the surface is more compressed and occupies a smaller area in one view. These effects cause problems because most stereo methods compare similarly sized regions (using the same-sized windows in both images), tacitly assuming that objects occupy the same extents in both images. Clearly this condition is violated by perspective foreshortening. We show how to overcome this problem using a local spatial frequency representation. A simple geometric analysis leads to an elegant solution in the frequency domain which, when applied to a Gabor filter-based stereo system, increases the system's maximum matchable surface angle from 30 degrees to over 75 degrees.