An Algorithm of Object Segmentation and Tracking for Stereoscopic Videoconferencing System

Object based stereo video coding is feasible for stereoscopic videoconferencing systems. In this paper, a new algorithm for stereo object segmentation and tracking is proposed for stereoscopic videoconferencing based on temporal-spatial characteristics between frames of left channel and disparity features between the left and right channels. First, the object is extracted from left channel with an improved watershed algorithm and high-order statistics. Then, a contour correspondence algorithm based on two-level disparity estimation is proposed for object extraction from the right channel according to the extracted object in the left channel. Finally, an object tracking algorithm is given for object segmentation in the following frames of stereo video by means of contour matching. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can segment and track video object pair in image sequence of stereo videoconferencing efficiently.