Adaptive window algorithm for aerial image stereo

Binocular stereo vision processes estimate 3D surfaces using a pair of images taken from different points of view. 3D surface characteristics are estimated by matching 3D image areas or features corresponding to the projections of same 3D points. The most classic area-based methods used cross correlation with a fixed window-size, but this technique presents a major draw-back: the computation of depth is generally prone to errors close to surface discontinuities. In this paper, we present our current results on aerial stereo images of urban areas from correlation-based algorithm, with an adaptive window-size constrained by an edge map extracted from the images. This technique is not used to refine an initial disparity map, but to create one with good discontinuities location.