Visible surface reconstruction from stereo images preserving discontinuities

The problem of computing depth from stereo images is approached as a mathematically ill-posed problem by using regularization theory. A variational principle for the reconstruction of surfaces in the presence of depth discontinuities is presented. Discontinuities are preserved using a controlled-continuity stabilizing functional which provides a local control over the smoothness properties of the solution. A discontinuity stabilizing functional imposes a curvilinear smoothness constraint on discontinuities to enable their reconstruction. The location of depth discontinuities is further restricted by using information from intensity edges. An iterative optimization method for the computation of depth is obtained, and a computer experiment with synthetic data is shown.