Hardware solution of real-time depth estimation based on stereo vision

3D video representation with depth maps is one efficient framework of 3DTV/free viewpoint television (FTV). 3D effect can be reconstructed based on human visional principle of binocular disparity. Texture image plus depth map provides an efficient solution of 3DTV application and real-time depth estimation is one barrier due to huge processing time consumption on complexity algorithm in the processing. An efficient hardware implementation of depth estimation is proposed for real time execution in this paper. The estimation system includes dual-channel video capture, image preprocessing, density pixel matching, pixel correlation and post processing. Each step of the system takes advantage of the hardware resource and adopts pipeline architecture to reduce the latency of combinational logic module at every stage and increase the throughput of the disparity extraction module. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method reduces the processing time and improves the ability of high resolution processing. The system can reach 131fps and Full HD (1920×1080) resolution, is suitable for adaptive real-time depth estimation and can be used as a subsystem embedded in the capture system of stereo vision.