Wan Dingrui, Zhou Jie
IEEE Trans Image Process. 2009 Mar;18(3):677-82. doi: 10.1109/TIP.2008.2011178.
Depth information is a critical cue for scene understanding which is very important for video surveillance. Traditional depth estimation approaches based on stereo vision have been well studied in past decades. However, little research is conducted with active cameras. In this correspondence, we discuss the depth estimation problem by employing dual-PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom)-camera system. The contributions of this correspondence includes the following three aspects: 1) we analyze the effect on depth's precision with different PTZ settings; 2) we propose a coarse-to-fine framework to deal with depth estimation problem for complex region; 3) we offer a method to generate mosaic of depth maps to combine depth information from different visual angles and resolutions for large scope. These contributions will widen the usage of dual-PTZ-camera systems to a greater extent. Real-data experimental results show that the proposed approach works well.
深度信息是场景理解的关键线索，这对视频监控非常重要。过去几十年中，基于立体视觉的传统深度估计方法已得到充分研究。然而，针对主动式相机的研究却很少。在本通信中，我们通过采用双云台（平移/倾斜/变焦）相机系统来讨论深度估计问题。本通信的贡献包括以下三个方面：1）我们分析了不同云台设置对深度精度的影响；2）我们提出了一种从粗到精的框架来处理复杂区域的深度估计问题；3）我们提供了一种生成深度图拼接图的方法，以结合来自不同视角和分辨率的深度信息，用于大场景。这些贡献将在更大程度上拓宽双云台相机系统的应用范围。实际数据实验结果表明，所提出的方法效果良好。
