This paper presents a new pre-processing algorithm for Time-of-Flight (TOF) depth map denoising. Typically, denoising algorithms use the raw depth map as it comes from the sensor. Systematic artifacts due to the measurement principle are not taken into account which degrades the denoising results. For phase measurement TOF sensing, a major artifact is observed as salt-and-pepper noise caused by the measurement’s ambiguity. Our pre-processing algorithm is able to isolate and unwrap affected pixels deploying the physical behavior of the capturing system yielding Gaussian noise. Using this pre-processing method before applying the denoising step clearly improves the parameter estimation for the denoising filter together with its final results.

Date Published: 17 March 2015
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9393, Three-Dimensional Image Processing, Measurement (3DIPM), and Applications 2015, 93930E (17 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2076622

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9393:
Three-Dimensional Image Processing, Measurement (3DIPM), and Applications 2015
Robert Sitnik; William Puech, Editor(s)