Evaluation of correspondence errors for stereo

Abstract The computation of a scalar correspondence error is the fundamental step in most stereo correspondence algorithms. The quality of the results obtained by the reconstruction algorithm directly depends on the characteristics of such error. We have developed a procedure to evaluate different methods proposed for the computation of the correspondence error. The evaluation is based on exploring the shape of the error surface generated and testing it for uniqueness, isolation and compatibility. The scheme presented makes it possible to recognise the known characteristics of the tested methods for the computation of a correspondence error from the results of the evaluations. Our results show that, for the tested scenes, the evaluation scheme allows us to identify the most appropriate method to compute the correspondence error.