LFNAT 2023 Challenge on Light Field Depth Estimation: Methods and Results

This paper reviews the 1st LFNAT challenge on light field depth estimation, which aims at predicting disparity information of central view image in a light field (i.e., pixel offset between central view image and adjacent view image). Compared to multi-view stereo matching, light field depth estimation emphasizes efficient utilization of the 2D angular information from multiple regularly varying views. This challenge specifies UrbanLF [20] light field dataset as the sole data source. There are two phases in total: submission phase and final evaluation phase, in which 75 registered participants successfully submit their predicted results in the first phase and 7 eligible teams compete in the second phase. The performance of all submissions is carefully reviewed and shown in this paper as a new standard for the current state-of-the-art in light field depth estimation. Moreover, the implementation details of these methods are also provided to stimulate related advanced research.