A Critical Review of Deep Learning-Based Multi-Sensor Fusion Techniques

In this review, we provide a detailed coverage of multi-sensor fusion techniques that use RGB stereo images and a sparse LiDAR-projected depth map as input data to output a dense depth map prediction. We cover state-of-the-art fusion techniques which, in recent years, have been deep learning-based methods that are end-to-end trainable. We then conduct a comparative evaluation of the state-of-the-art techniques and provide a detailed analysis of their strengths and limitations as well as the applications they are best suited for

A performance analysis of dense stereo correspondence algorithms and error reduction techniques

Abstract: Dense stereo correspondence has been intensely studied and there exists a wide variety of proposed solutions in the literature. Different datasets have been constructed to test stereo algorithms, however, their ground truth formation and scene types vary. In this paper, state-of-the-art algorithms are compared using a number of datasets captured under varied conditions, with accuracy and density metrics forming the basis of a performance evaluation. Pre- and post-processing disparity map error reduction techniques are quantified

4D Temporally Coherent Light-field Video

Light-field video has recently been used in virtual and augmented reality applications to increase realism and immersion. However, existing light-field methods are generally limited to static scenes due to the requirement to acquire a dense scene representation. The large amount of data and the absence of methods to infer temporal coherence pose major challenges in storage, compression and editing compared to conventional video. In this paper, we propose the first method to extract a spatio-temporally coherent light-field video representation. A novel method to obtain Epipolar Plane Images (EPIs) from a spare light-field camera array is proposed. EPIs are used to constrain scene flow estimation to obtain 4D temporally coherent representations of dynamic light-fields. Temporal coherence is achieved on a variety of light-field datasets. Evaluation of the proposed light-field scene flow against existing multi-view dense correspondence approaches demonstrates a significant improvement in accuracy of temporal coherence.Comment: Published in 3D Vision (3DV) 201

Estimating Epipolar Geometry With The Use of a Camera Mounted Orientation Sensor

Context: Image processing and computer vision are rapidly becoming more and more commonplace, and the amount of information about a scene, such as 3D geometry, that can be obtained from an image, or multiple images of the scene is steadily increasing due to increasing resolutions and availability of imaging sensors, and an active research community. In parallel, advances in hardware design and manufacturing are allowing for devices such as gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers and GPS receivers to be included alongside imaging devices at a consumer level. Aims: This work aims to investigate the use of orientation sensors in the field of computer vision as sources of data to aid with image processing and the determination of a scene’s geometry, in particular, the epipolar geometry of a pair of images - and devises a hybrid methodology from two sets of previous works in order to exploit the information available from orientation sensors alongside data gathered from image processing techniques. Method: A readily available consumer-level orientation sensor was used alongside a digital camera to capture images of a set of scenes and record the orientation of the camera. The fundamental matrix of these pairs of images was calculated using a variety of techniques - both incorporating data from the orientation sensor and excluding its use Results: Some methodologies could not produce an acceptable result for the Fundamental Matrix on certain image pairs, however, a method described in the literature that used an orientation sensor always produced a result - however in cases where the hybrid or purely computer vision methods also produced a result - this was found to be the least accurate. Conclusion: Results from this work show that the use of an orientation sensor to capture information alongside an imaging device can be used to improve both the accuracy and reliability of calculations of the scene’s geometry - however noise from the orientation sensor can limit this accuracy and further research would be needed to determine the magnitude of this problem and methods of mitigation

Depth measurement in integral images.

The development of a satisfactory the three-dimensional image system is a constant pursuit of the scientific community and entertainment industry. Among the many different methods of producing three-dimensional images, integral imaging is a technique that is capable of creating and encoding a true volume spatial optical model of the object scene in the form of a planar intensity distribution by using unique optical components. The generation of depth maps from three-dimensional integral images is of major importance for modern electronic display systems to enable content-based interactive manipulation and content-based image coding. The aim of this work is to address the particular issue of analyzing integral images in order to extract depth information from the planar recorded integral image. To develop a way of extracting depth information from the integral image, the unique characteristics of the three-dimensional integral image data have been analyzed and the high correlation existing between the pixels at one microlens pitch distance interval has been discovered. A new method of extracting depth information from viewpoint image extraction is developed. The viewpoint image is formed by sampling pixels at the same local position under different micro-lenses. Each viewpoint image is a two-dimensional parallel projection of the three-dimensional scene. Through geometrically analyzing the integral recording process, a depth equation is derived which describes the mathematic relationship between object depth and the corresponding viewpoint images displacement. With the depth equation, depth estimation is then converted to the task of disparity analysis. A correlation-based block matching approach is chosen to find the disparity among viewpoint images. To improve the performance of the depth estimation from the extracted viewpoint images, a modified multi-baseline algorithm is developed, followed by a neighborhood constraint and relaxation technique to improve the disparity analysis. To deal with the homogenous region and object border where the correct depth estimation is almost impossible from disparity analysis, two techniques, viz. Feature Block Pre-selection and “Consistency Post-screening, are further used. The final depth maps generated from the available integral image data have achieved very good visual effects

Dense Vision in Image-guided Surgery

Image-guided surgery needs an efficient and effective camera tracking system in order to perform augmented reality for overlaying preoperative models or label cancerous tissues on the 2D video images of the surgical scene. Tracking in endoscopic/laparoscopic scenes however is an extremely difficult task primarily due to tissue deformation, instrument invasion into the surgical scene and the presence of specular highlights. State of the art feature-based SLAM systems such as PTAM fail in tracking such scenes since the number of good features to track is very limited. When the scene is smoky and when there are instrument motions, it will cause feature-based tracking to fail immediately. The work of this thesis provides a systematic approach to this problem using dense vision. We initially attempted to register a 3D preoperative model with multiple 2D endoscopic/laparoscopic images using a dense method but this approach did not perform well. We subsequently proposed stereo reconstruction to directly obtain the 3D structure of the scene. By using the dense reconstructed model together with robust estimation, we demonstrate that dense stereo tracking can be incredibly robust even within extremely challenging endoscopic/laparoscopic scenes. Several validation experiments have been conducted in this thesis. The proposed stereo reconstruction algorithm has turned out to be the state of the art method for several publicly available ground truth datasets. Furthermore, the proposed robust dense stereo tracking algorithm has been proved highly accurate in synthetic environment (< 0.1 mm RMSE) and qualitatively extremely robust when being applied to real scenes in RALP prostatectomy surgery. This is an important step toward achieving accurate image-guided laparoscopic surgery.Open Acces

Post-production of holoscopic 3D image

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University LondonHoloscopic 3D imaging also known as “Integral imaging” was first proposed by Lippmann in 1908. It facilitates a promising technique for creating full colour spatial image that exists in space. It promotes a single lens aperture for recording spatial images of a real scene, thus it offers omnidirectional motion parallax and true 3D depth, which is the fundamental feature for digital refocusing. While stereoscopic and multiview 3D imaging systems simulate human eye technique, holoscopic 3D imaging system mimics fly’s eye technique, in which viewpoints are orthographic projection. This system enables true 3D representation of a real scene in space, thus it offers richer spatial cues compared to stereoscopic 3D and multiview 3D systems. Focus has been the greatest challenge since the beginning of photography. It is becoming even more critical in film production where focus pullers are finding it difficult to get the right focus with camera resolution becoming increasingly higher. Holoscopic 3D imaging enables the user to carry out re/focusing in post-production. There have been three main types of digital refocusing methods namely Shift and Integration, full resolution, and full resolution with blind. However, these methods suffer from artifacts and unsatisfactory resolution in the final resulting image. For instance the artifacts are in the form of blocky and blurry pictures, due to unmatched boundaries. An upsampling method is proposed that improves the resolution of the resulting image of shift and integration approach. Sub-pixel adjustment of elemental images including “upsampling technique” with smart filters are proposed to reduce the artifacts, introduced by full resolution with blind method as well as to improve both image quality and resolution of the final rendered image. A novel 3D object extraction method is proposed that takes advantage of disparity, which is also applied to generate stereoscopic 3D images from holoscopic 3D image. Cross correlation matching algorithm is used to obtain the disparity map from the disparity information and the desirable object is then extracted. In addition, 3D image conversion algorithm is proposed for the generation of stereoscopic and multiview 3D images from both unidirectional and omnidirectional holoscopic 3D images, which facilitates 3D content reformation

Holoscopic 3D image depth estimation and segmentation techniques

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonToday’s 3D imaging techniques offer significant benefits over conventional 2D imaging techniques. The presence of natural depth information in the scene affords the observer an overall improved sense of reality and naturalness. A variety of systems attempting to reach this goal have been designed by many independent research groups, such as stereoscopic and auto-stereoscopic systems. Though the images displayed by such systems tend to cause eye strain, fatigue and headaches after prolonged viewing as users are required to focus on the screen plane/accommodation to converge their eyes to a point in space in a different plane/convergence. Holoscopy is a 3D technology that targets overcoming the above limitations of current 3D technology and was recently developed at Brunel University. This work is part W4.1 of the 3D VIVANT project that is funded by the EU under the ICT program and coordinated by Dr. Aman Aggoun at Brunel University, West London, UK. The objective of the work described in this thesis is to develop estimation and segmentation techniques that are capable of estimating precise 3D depth, and are applicable for holoscopic 3D imaging system. Particular emphasis is given to the task of automatic techniques i.e. favours algorithms with broad generalisation abilities, as no constraints are placed on the setting. Algorithms that provide invariance to most appearance based variation of objects in the scene (e.g. viewpoint changes, deformable objects, presence of noise and changes in lighting). Moreover, have the ability to estimate depth information from both types of holoscopic 3D images i.e. Unidirectional and Omni-directional which gives horizontal parallax and full parallax (vertical and horizontal), respectively. The main aim of this research is to develop 3D depth estimation and 3D image segmentation techniques with great precision. In particular, emphasis on automation of thresholding techniques and cues identifications for development of robust algorithms. A method for depth-through-disparity feature analysis has been built based on the existing correlation between the pixels at a one micro-lens pitch which has been exploited to extract the viewpoint images (VPIs). The corresponding displacement among the VPIs has been exploited to estimate the depth information map via setting and extracting reliable sets of local features. ii Feature-based-point and feature-based-edge are two novel automatic thresholding techniques for detecting and extracting features that have been used in this approach. These techniques offer a solution to the problem of setting and extracting reliable features automatically to improve the performance of the depth estimation related to the generalizations, speed and quality. Due to the resolution limitation of the extracted VPIs, obtaining an accurate 3D depth map is challenging. Therefore, sub-pixel shift and integration is a novel interpolation technique that has been used in this approach to generate super-resolution VPIs. By shift and integration of a set of up-sampled low resolution VPIs, the new information contained in each viewpoint is exploited to obtain a super resolution VPI. This produces a high resolution perspective VPI with wide Field Of View (FOV). This means that the holoscopic 3D image system can be converted into a multi-view 3D image pixel format. Both depth accuracy and a fast execution time have been achieved that improved the 3D depth map. For a 3D object to be recognized the related foreground regions and depth information map needs to be identified. Two novel unsupervised segmentation methods that generate interactive depth maps from single viewpoint segmentation were developed. Both techniques offer new improvements over the existing methods due to their simple use and being fully automatic; therefore, producing the 3D depth interactive map without human interaction. The final contribution is a performance evaluation, to provide an equitable measurement for the extent of the success of the proposed techniques for foreground object segmentation, 3D depth interactive map creation and the generation of 2D super-resolution viewpoint techniques. The no-reference image quality assessment metrics and their correlation with the human perception of quality are used with the help of human participants in a subjective manner