3D object articulation and motion estimation for efficient multiview image sequence coding

This paper describes a procedure for model-based coding of all the channels of a multiview image sequence. The scheme is initialized by the adaptation of a wireframe model to the consistent depth information. Robust classification techniques are then used to obtain an articulated description of the foreground of the scene (head, neck, shoulders). The object articulation procedure is based on a novel scheme for the segmentation of the rigid 3D motion fields of the triangle patches of the 3D model object. Spatial neighborhood constraints are used to improve the reliability of the original triangle motion estimation. The motion estimation and motion field segmentation procedures are repeated iteratively until a satisfactory object articulation emerges. Rigid 3D motion estimation is performed next for each resulting sub-object. The performance of the resulting articulation method is evaluated experimentally.