Hole Filling Method for Depth Image Based Rendering Based on Boundary Decision

In three-dimensional display systems, depth image based rendering is the most commonly used technique for generating images captured from a virtual viewpoint through reference views and depth maps. However, disoccluded hole filling remain a challenging issue as newly exposed area appears in the virtual view. Image inpainting based hole filling is a popular approach for filling in the hole, but the conventional methods generate annoying artifacts along the boundaries of the foreground objects. This letter presents a robust hole filling method that generates a virtual view with high quality. First, by using the local and neighboring property of the depth map, the background region is filled prior to the foreground region. Also, in the matching step to find the data to fill in, depth homogeneity is considered. Finally, based on the boundary decision using the depth property, the boundary regions are filled with background-relevant data to reduce boundary artifacts. Experimental results show that the views synthesized by the proposed method achieve higher visual comfort than the view synthesized by the existing methods.