• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.11 no.1 s.30
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• pp.91-99
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• 2006

Pre-processing is one of image processing techniques to enhance image quality or appropriately convert a given image into another form for a specific purpose. An 8 bit depth map obtained by a depth camera usually contains a lot of noisy components caused by the characteristics of depth camera and edges are also more distorted by the quality of a source object and illumination condition comparing with edges in RGB texture image. To reduce this distortion, we use noise removing filters, but they are only able to reduce noise components, so that distorted edges of depth map can not be properly recovered. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that can reduce noise components and also enhance the quality of edges of depth map by using edges in RGB texture. Consequently, we can reduce errors in multi-view stereo image synthesis process.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.3558-3577
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• 2017

In 2D-to-3D video conversion process, the virtual left and right view can be generated from 2D video and its corresponding depth map by depth image based rendering (DIBR). The depth map plays an important role in conversion system, so the copyright protection for depth map is necessary. However, the provided virtual views may be distributed illegally and the depth map does not directly expose to viewers. In previous works, the copyright information embedded into the depth map cannot be extracted from virtual views after the DIBR process. In this paper, a new copyright protection scheme for the depth map is proposed, in which the copyright information can be detected from the virtual views even without the depth map. The experimental results have shown that the proposed method has a good robustness against JPEG attacks, filtering and noise.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.2434-2448
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• 2014

This research proposed the domain division depth map quantization for multiview intermediate image generation using Depth Image-Based Rendering (DIBR). This technique used per-pixel depth quantization according to the percentage of depth bits assigned in domains of depth range. A comparative experiment was conducted to investigate the potential benefits of the proposed method against the linear depth quantization on DIBR multiview intermediate image generation. The experiment evaluated three quantization methods with computer-generated 3D scenes, which consisted of various scene complexities and backgrounds, under varying the depth resolution. The results showed that the proposed domain division depth quantization method outperformed the linear method on the 7- bit or lower depth map, especially in the scene with the large object.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2010.07a
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• pp.241-243
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• 2010

Previous approaches to the 2D to 3D conversion problem require heavy computation or considerable amount of user input. In this paper, we propose a rather simple method in estimating the depth map from a single image using a monocular depth cue: haze. Using the haze imaging model, we obtain the distance information and estimate a reliable depth map from a single scenery image. Using the depth map, we also suggest an algorithm that converts the single image to 3D stereoscopic images. We determine a disparity value for each pixel from the original 'left' image and generate a corresponding 'right' image. Results show that the algorithm gives well refined depth maps despite the simplicity of the approach.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.43-54
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• 2018

Images taken in haze weather are characteristic of low contrast and poor visibility. The process of reconstructing clear-weather image from a hazy image is called dehazing. The main challenge of image dehazing is to estimate the transmission map or depth map for an input hazy image. In this paper, we propose a single image dehazing method by utilizing the Generative Adversarial Network(GAN) for accurate depth map estimation. The proposed GAN model is trained to learn a nonlinear mapping between the input hazy image and corresponding depth map. With the trained model, first the depth map of the input hazy image is estimated and used to compute the transmission map. Then a guided filter is utilized to preserve the important edge information of the hazy image, thus obtaining a refined transmission map. Finally, the haze-free image is recovered via atmospheric scattering model. Although the proposed GAN model is trained on synthetic indoor images, it can be applied to real hazy images. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior dehazing results against the state-of-the-art algorithms on both the real hazy images and the synthetic hazy images, in terms of quantitative performance and visual performance.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.697-698
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• 2006

In this paper, we propose a new scheme to generate multi-view images using a depth-image-based rendering (DIBR) technique. In order to improve the quality of multi-view images at newly exposed areas during mesh-based rendering, we preprocess the depth map using a Gaussian smoothing filter. Previous algorithms apply a smoothing filter to the whole depth map even if the depth map is collapsed. After extracting objects from the depth map, we apply the smoothing filter to their boundaries. Finally, we cannot only maintain the depth quality, but also generate high quality multi-view images. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms previous works and supports an efficient depth keying technique.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.1855-1862
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• 2010

In virtual reality, there are increasing qualitative development in service technologies for realtime interaction system development, 3- dimensional contents, 3D TV and augment reality services. These services experience difficulties to generate depth value that is essential to recover 3D space to form solidity on existing contents. Hence, research for the generation of effective depth-map using 2D is necessary. This thesis will describe a shortcoming of an existing depth-map generation for the recovery of 3D space using 2D image and will propose an enhanced depth-map generation algorithm that complements a shortcoming of existing algorithms and utilizes the definition of depth direction based on the vanishing point within image.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.6 no.10
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• pp.2663-2678
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• 2012

Due to sharp depth transition, big holes may be found in the novel view that is synthesized by depth-image-based rendering (DIBR). A hole-filling method based on disparity map is proposed. One important aspect of the method is that the disparity map of destination image is used for hole-filling, instead of the depth image of reference image. Firstly, the big hole detection based on disparity map is conducted, and the start point and the end point of the hole are recorded. Then foreground pixels and background pixels are distinguished for hole-dilating according to disparity map, so that areas with matching errors can be determined and eliminated. In addition, parallaxes of pixels in the area with holes and matching errors are changed to new values. Finally, holes are filled with background pixels from reference image according to these new parallaxes. Experimental results show that the quality of the new view after hole-filling is quite well; and geometric distortions are avoided in destination image, in contrast to the virtual view generated by depth-smoothing methods and image inpainting methods. Moreover, this method is easy for hardware implementation.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.164-177
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• 2009

The DIBR(depth image-based rendering) method gives the sense of depth to viewers by using one color image and corresponding depth image. At this time, the qualities of the generated left- and right-image depend on the baseline distance of the virtual cameras corresponding to the view of the generated left- and right-image. In this paper, we present a novel method for enhancing the sense of depth by adjusting baseline distance of virtual cameras. Geometric analysis shows that the sense of depth is better in accordance with the increasing disparity due to the reduction of the image distortion. However, the entailed image degradation is not considered. Experimental results show that there is maximum bound in the disparity increasement due to image degradation and the visual field. Since the image degradation is reduced for increasing that bound, we add a depth map preprocessing. Since the interactive service where the disparity and view position are controlled by viewers can also be provided, the proposed method can be applied to the mobile broadcasting system such as DMB as well as 3DTV system.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.1245-1252
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• 2013

As the usage of digital image contents increase, a security problem for the payed image data or the ones requiring confidentiality is raised. This paper propose a depth-map image contents encryption methodology to hide the depth information. This method is performed on the frequency coefficients in the Wavelet domain. This method, by selecting the level and threshold value for the wavelet transform, encryption at various strengths are possible. The experimental results showed that encrypting only 0.048% of the entire data was enough to hide the constants of the depth-map. The encryption algorithm expected to be used effectively on the researches on encryption and others for image processing.