Segmenting three-dimensional video images using stereo

A computer program product comprising:

• a computer usable medium having computer program code embodied therein to segment a three-dimensional scene having foreground and background regions, the computer program code comprising:
• computer readable program code for matching regions in stereo images of the 3-D scene, the stereo images including left and right images;
• computer readable program code for computing ranges of matched regions;
• and
• computer readable program code for separating the foreground region from the background region using the computed ranges of the matched regions.

A system comprising:

• an imaging device to capture images of a three-dimensional scene;
• a video processor coupled to the imaging device to segment a three-dimensional (3-D) scene having foreground and background regions, the video processor comprising:
• a correspondence analyzer to match regions in stereo images of the (3-D) scene, the stereo images including left and right images,
• a range calculator coupled to the correspondence analyzer to compute ranges of matched regions, and
• a foreground separator coupled to the range calculator to separate the foreground region from the background region using the computed ranges of the matched regions.