Multiresolution Wavelet-Based Disparity Estimation for Stereo Image Compression

The ordinary stereo image of an object consists of data of left and right views. Therefore, the left and right image pairs have to be transmitted simultaneously in order to display 3-dimentional video at the remote site. However, due to the twice data in comparing with a monoscopic image of the same object, it needs to be compressed for fast transmission and resource saving. Hence, it needs an effective coding algorithm for compressing stereo image. It was found previously that compressing left and right frames independently will achieve the compression ratio lower than compressing by utilizing the spatial redundancy between both frames. Therefore, in this paper, we study the stereo image compression technique based on the multiresolution wavelet transform using varied disparity-block size for estimation and compensation. The size of disparity-block in the stereo pair subbands are scaling on a coarse-to-fine wavelet coefficients strategy. Finally, the reference left image and residual right image after disparity estimation and compensation are coded by using SPIHT coding. The considered method demonstrates good performance in both PSNR measures and visual quality for stereo image.