A Structure-Preserving Marker Hiding Approach for Augmented Reality Based on Hollow Markers

The marker is a commonly-used tool for real-time camera calibration in various indoor augmented reality(AR) applications, but the presence of artificial markers reduces the photorealism of the augmented scene, which significantly breaks the harmonious. Marker hiding based on image inpainting techniques repaired the holes where the marker is removed, but inpainting such a large region was too difficult to seamlessly stitch structure features in the background. In this paper, we introduce a novel type of markers called hollow marker, whose calibration-independent regions are hollowed out to reduce the area of image inpainting. And we also propose a marker hiding method based on such hollow markers. This method takes full advantages of the background structures that are revealed in the hollowed region of our markers, produces a fast and seamless marker hiding effect using a structure-preserving image inpainting algorithm. Using the ARToolKit platform and self-built experimental environments, our experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves high quality of marker hiding effects without losing the accuracy of camera calibration, and overcomes the issue of existed AR marker hiding methods that break background structure features due to the large area of image inpainting.