Depth Reconstruction Filter and Down/Up Sampling for Depth Coding in 3D Video

Depth images represent Three-Dimensional (3D) scene information and are commonly used for Depth Image Based Rendering (DIBR) to support 3D video and free-viewpoint video applications. The virtual view is generally rendered by DIBR technique and its quality highly depends on the quality of depth data. Thus, efficient depth coding is a core technique to realize 3D video systems. In this letter, the authors propose a depth reconstruction filter and depth down/up sampling techniques. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods reduce the depth coding bit rate and achieve better rendering quality.