Abstract: This paper presents a new cooperative technique for solving the dense stereo correspondence problem in natural images using mean field theory (MFT). Given a gray scale stereo image pair, the disparity map for the scene is modeled as a locally interconnected network of graded neurons. The network encodes the correspondence problem as an energy function composed of terms representing disparity uniqueness, disparity continuity, and system stability evaluated at each neuron. A MFT approximation to the simulated annealing process commonly used to locate the minimum energy solution for the disparity map is introduced and developed. Results using this approach are compared with those from a standard simulated annealing algorithm and demonstrate a significant improvement in rate of convergence with comparable solution quality.!
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