Comparison of Stereo Matching Algorithms for the Development of Disparity Map

Abstract

Stereo Matching is one of the classical problems in computer vision for the extraction of 3D information but still controversial for accuracy and processing costs. The use of matching techniques and cost functions is crucial in the development of the disparity map. This paper presents a comparative study of six different stereo matching algorithms including Block Matching (BM), Block Matching with Dynamic Programming (BMDP), Belief Propagation (BP), Gradient Feature Matching (GF), Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG) and Fixed-Window Aggregated Cost (FWAC). In addition, three cost functions, namely, Mean Squared Error (MSE), Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD), and Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC) were utilized and compared. The stereo images used in this study were obtained from the Middlebury Stereo Datasets provided with perfect and imperfect calibrations. It was observed that the selection of matching function is quite important and also depends on the image properties. Results showed that the BP algorithm in most cases provided better results achieving accuracies over 95%. Accordingly, BP algorithm is highly recommended based on rapidity and performance and for applications with the need of detection of small details, HOG is advised.