Automatic Depth Extraction from 2D Images Using a Cluster-Based Learning Framework

There has been a significant increase in the availability of 3D players and displays in the last years. Nonetheless, the amount of 3D content has not experimented an increment of such magnitude. To alleviate this problem, many algorithms for converting images and videos from 2D to 3D have been proposed. Here, we present an automatic learning-based 2D-3D image conversion approach, based on the key hypothesis that color images with similar structure likely present a similar depth structure. The presented algorithm estimates the depth of a color query image using the prior knowledge provided by a repository of color + depth images. The algorithm clusters this database attending to their structural similarity, and then creates a representative of each color-depth image cluster that will be used as prior depth map. The selection of the appropriate prior depth map corresponding to one given color query image is accomplished by comparing the structural similarity in the color domain between the query image and the database. The comparison is based on a K-Nearest Neighbor framework that uses a learning procedure to build an adaptive combination of image feature descriptors. The best correspondences determine the cluster, and in turn the associated prior depth map. Finally, this prior estimation is enhanced through a segmentation-guided filtering that obtains the final depth map estimation. This approach has been tested using two publicly available databases, and compared with several state-of-the-art algorithms in order to prove its efficiency.