In order to improve the performance of correlation-based disparity computation of stereo vision algorithms, standard methods need to choose in advance the value of the maximum disparity (MD). This value corresponds to the maximum displacement of the projection of a physical point expected between the two images. It generally depends on the motion model, the camera intrinsic parameters and on the depths of the observed scene. In this paper, we show that there is no optimal MD value that minimizes the matching errors in all image regions simultaneously and we propose a novel approach of the disparity computation that does not rely on any a priori MD. Two variants of this approach will be presented. When compared to traditional correlation-based methods, we show that our approach improves not only the accuracy of the results but also the efficiency of the algorithm. A local energy minimization is also proposed for fast refinement of the results. An extensive comparative study with ground truth is carried out on classical stereo images and the results show that the proposed method clearly gives more accurate results and it is two times faster than the fastest possible implementation of traditional correlation-based methods.     «

In order to improve the performance of correlation-based disparity computation of stereo vision algorithms, standard methods need to choose in advance the value of the maximum disparity (MD). This value corresponds to the maximum displacement of the projection of a physical point expected between the two images. It generally depends on the motion model, the camera intrinsic parameters and on the depths of the observed scene. In this paper, we show that there is no optimal MD value that...     »