Real time area-based stereo matching algorithm for multimedia video devices

摘要

In this paper we investigate stereovision algorithms that are suitable for multimedia video devices. The main novel contribution of this article is detailed analysis of modern graphical processing unit (GPU)–based dense local stereovision matching algorithm for real time multimedia applications. We considered two GPU?based implementations and one CPU implementation (as the baseline). The results (in terms of frame per second, fps) were measured twenty times per algorithm configuration and, then averaged (the standard deviation was below 5%). The disparity range was [0,20], [0,40], [0,60], [0,80], [0,100] and [0,120]. We also have used three different matching window sizes (3×3, 5×5 and 7×7) and three stereo pair image resolutions 320×240, 640×480 and 1024×768. We developed our algorithm under assumption that it should process data with the same speed as it arrives from captures’ devices. Because most popular of the shelf video cameras (multimedia video devices) capture data with the frequency of 30Hz, this frequency was threshold to consider implementation of our algorithm to be “real time”. We have proved that our GPU algorithm that uses only global memory can be used successfully in that kind of tasks. It is very important because that kind of implementation is more hardware?independent than algorithms that operate on shared memory. Knowing that we might avoid the algorithms failure while moving the multimedia application between machines operating different hardware. From our knowledge this type of research has not been yet reported.