Depth map estimation in light fields using an stereo-like taxonomy

Abstract

The light field or LF is a function that describes the amount of light traveling in every direction (angular) through every point (spatial) in a scene, this LF can be captured in several ways, using arrays of cameras, or more recently using a single camera with an special lens, that allows the capture of angular and spatial information of light rays of a scene (LF). This recent camera implementation gives a different approach to find the dept of a scene using only a single camera. In order to estimate the depth, we describe a taxonomy, similar to the one used in stereo Depth-map algorithms. That consist in the creation of a cost tensor to represent the matching cost between different disparities, then, using a support weight window, aggregate the cost tensor, finally, using a winner-takes-all optimization algorithm, search for the best disparities. This paper explains in detail the several changes made to an stereo-like taxonomy, to be applied in a light field, and evaluate this algorithm using a recent database that for the first time, provides several ground-truth light fields, with a respective ground-truth depth map.