Semi-reference image quality metric for virtual view images in free-viewpoint television

A semi-reference image quality assessment metric based on similarity measurement for synthesized virtual viewpoint image （VVI） in free-viewpoint television system （FFV） is proposed in this paper. The key point of the proposed metric is taking resemblant information between VVI and its neighbor view images for quality assessment to make our metric to be extended to multi-semi-reference image quality assessment easily. The proposed metric first extracts impact factors from image features, then combines an image synthesis technique and similarity functions, in which, disparity information are taken into account for registering the resemblant regions. Experiments are divided into three phases. Phase I is to verify the validation of the proposed metric by taking impaired images and original reference into account. The experimental results show the agreement between evaluation scores and bio-characteristic of human visual system. Phase II shows the accordance with Phase I by taking neighbor view as reference. The proposed metric can be taken as a full reference one to evaluate the image quality even though the original reference is absent. Phase III is then performed to evaluate the quality of WI. Evaluation scores in the experimental results are able to evaluate the quality of VVI.

FTV系统中面向虚拟视点合成的深度编码

为了降低自由视点电视系统中由于深度估计不准确和深度数据压缩带来的量化失真对重建虚拟视点图像质量产生的影响,提出了一种面向虚拟视点绘制的深度压缩算法.根据深度数据的统计特性,设计了一种基于三次B样条函数的上下采样方法对深度图进行下采样.采用多视点视频编码对下采样深度图进行编码,在解码端则对深度图进行上采样,并针对解码深度图边缘处的模糊现象,用双边滤波器优化深度图边界.实验结果表明,与传统的MVC编码方案相比,该方案在保持虚拟绘制图像质量不变(甚至略有提升)的情况下,显著降低了传输码率,有助于在自由视点系统的接收端获得高精度的重建图像.

3DV quality model based depth maps for view synthesis in FTV system

Depth maps are used for synthesis virtual view in free-viewpoint television （FTV） systems. When depth maps are derived using existing depth estimation methods, the depth distortions will cause undesirable artifacts in the synthesized views. To solve this problem, a 3D video quality model base depth maps （D-3DV） for virtual view synthesis and depth map coding in the FTV applications is proposed. First, the relationships between distortions in coded depth map and rendered view are derived. Then, a precisely 3DV quality model based depth characteristics is develop for the synthesized virtual views. Finally, based on D-3DV model, a multilateral filtering is applied as a pre-processed filter to reduce rendering artifacts. The experimental results evaluated by objective and subjective methods indicate that the proposed D-3DV model can reduce bit-rate of depth coding and achieve better rendering quality.

Non-reference virtual view quality evaluation of MVD

The quality of virtual view based on multi-view video （MVD） plus depth format is often evaluated by PSNR or subjectively judged. However, due to synthesizing arbitrary view images, the virtual view images mostly have no reference images and are only assessed using non-reference. Virtual view images synthesized by depth estimation reference software （DERS） and view synthesis reference software （VSRS） often accompanied with blockiness and other distortions on the edge. In addition, matching level for the depth map and the corresponding texture maps of left and right views also affects the quality of the virtual view. This paper compares the edge similarity of the depth and the corresponding texture maps which generate the intermediate virtual view and combined with the virtual view＇s blockiness which causing blur to evaluate the quality of the virtual view. Experiment results show that the proposed method can reflect the quality of the virtual view better.

基于摄像机几何模型的视间预测方法

多视视频编码是实现自由视角电视和三维立体电视等应用的关键技术。为了有效地提高视间预测的效率,该文基于摄像机几何模型,提出了一种新的视间预测算法,其特点是利用摄像机参数和深度信息对视差矢量进行预测,并运用亮度补偿工具和亚像素插值技术减少视差补偿误差。将新的算法集成到目前最新的多视视频编码框架H.264/AVCM VC中后,实验结果表明,新的算法最高能节省32.82%的码率,编码增益最高可达2.067 dB。