Calculation of temporally coherent disparity from sequence of video frames

A system for calculation of temporally coherent disparity, the system comprising:

• a disparity cost initialization circuit to calculate a plurality of initial spatial disparity costs between a pixel of a first image frame from a reference camera and each of a plurality of corresponding pixels in an image frame from a secondary camera;
• a motion estimation circuit to estimate a motion vector for the pixel of the first image frame from the reference camera to a corresponding pixel from a second image frame from the reference camera;
• a confidence calculation circuit to calculate a confidence value associated with the estimated motion vector, the confidence value based on a measure of similarity between the color of the pixel of the first image frame and the color of the pixel of the second image frame, from the reference camera;
• a disparity cost calculation circuit to calculate temporally coherent disparity costs based on the initial spatial disparity costs weighted by the confidence value;
• and
• a disparity calculation circuit to select a temporally coherent disparity based on the temporally coherent disparity costs.

At least one non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, result in the following operations for calculation of temporally coherent disparity, the operations comprising:

• calculating a plurality of initial spatial disparity costs between a pixel of a first image frame from a reference camera and each of a plurality of corresponding pixels in an image frame from a secondary camera;
• estimating a motion vector for the pixel of the first image frame from the reference camera to a corresponding pixel from a second image frame from the reference camera;
• calculating a confidence value associated with the estimated motion vector, the confidence value based on a measure of similarity between the color of the pixel of the first image frame and the color of the pixel of the second image frame, from the reference camera;
• calculating temporally coherent disparity costs based on the initial spatial disparity costs weighted by the confidence value;
• and
• selecting a temporally coherent disparity based on the temporally coherent disparity costs.