Fusion of colour and depth partitions for depth map coding

Abstract

3D video coding includes the use of multiple color views and depth maps associated to each view. An adequate coding of depth maps should be adapted to the characteristics of depth maps: smooth regions and sharp edges. In this paper a segmentation-based technique is proposed for improving the depth map compression while preserving the main discontinuities that exploits the color-depth similarity of 3D video. An initial coarse depth map segmentation is used to locate the main discontinuities in depth. The resulting partition is improved by fusing a color partition. We assume that the color image is first encoded and available when the associated depth map is encoded, therefore the color partition can be segmented in the decoder without introducing any extra cost. A new segmentation criterion inspired by super-pixels techniques is proposed to obtain the color partition. Initial experimental results show similar compression efficiency to HEVC with a big potential for further improvements.