A Method for Determining Depth for Stereoscopic Reconstruction of Three Dimensional Images

A method for obtaining a disparity map for reconstructing a three dimensional image under real time conditions, wherein said disparity map is based upon a large range of disparities (R_D) and is obtained by using a hardware provided with a buffer configured to store data associated with a HW_D disparities having capacity which is substantially less than a capacity required for storing data associated with the large disparities' range, said method comprising the steps of:

• providing a pair of stereoscopic images captured essentially simultaneously by two image capturing devices;
• dividing said large disparities' range into N disparity ranges, wherein each of said N disparity ranges is associated with an amount of data that is less than or equal to HW_D, wherein a minimal disparity range for each of the disparity ranges is equal to HW_D_min(i), and wherein N is an integer greater than 1;
• executing a stereo matching algorithm for a plurality of times, using data retrieved from the pair of corresponding captured images, wherein the stereo matching algorithm is executed each time while using a different disparity range selected from among the N disparity ranges, thereby obtaining a plurality of individual disparity maps, each of which corresponds to a different disparity range;
• and
• merging the plurality of individual disparity maps to generate therefrom a map of the large disparities' range for reconstructing the three dimensional image.