Texture-assisted Kinect depth inpainting

The emergence of Kinect facilitates the possibility of depth capture in real-time and with low cost by consumers. It also provides powerful tool and inspiration for researchers to engage in new array of technology development. However, the quality of the depth map captured from Kinect is still inadequate for many applications due to holes, noises and artifacts existing within the depth information. In this paper, we present a texture assisted Kinect depth inpainting framework, aiming at obtaining improved depth information. In this framework, the relationship between texture and depth is investigated, and the characteristics of depth are also exploited. More specifically, texture edge information is extracted to assist the depth inpainting. Furthermore, filtering and diffusion are designed for hole-filling and edge alignment. Experiment results demonstrate that the Kinect depth can be appropriately repaired in both smooth and edge region. Comparing with the original depth, the inpainted depth information enhances the quality of advanced processing such as 3D reconstruction.