Real-Time System for High-Image Resolution Disparity Estimation

We present the hardware implementation of a simple, fast technique for depth estimation based on phase measurement. This technique avoids the problem of phase warping and is much less susceptible to camera noise and distortion than standard block-matching stereo systems. The architecture exploits the parallel computing resources of FPGA devices to achieve a computation speed of 65 megapixels per second. For this purpose, we have designed a fine-grain pipeline structure that can be arranged with a customized frame-grabber module to process 52 frames per second at a resolution of 1280times960 pixels. We have measured the system's degradation due to bit quantization errors and compared its performance with other previous approaches. We have also used different Gabor-scale circuits, which can be selected by the user according to the application addressed and typical image structure in the target scenario

I. Introduction

The biological capacity for binocular depth perception is useful in many visual domains such as autonomous navigation, 3-D reconstruction, active tracking, or face recognition [1]–[4]. It permits the reconstruction of information about depth encoded within binocular images, a task which is performed in the visual cortex by specialized receptive field structures [5]. Studies have shown that a substantial proportion of neurons in the striate and prestriate cortex of monkeys have stereoscopic properties, i.e., they respond differentially to binocular stimuli, thus providing cues for stereoscopic depth perception [6]–[9].