Abstract. Census transform (CT), a stereo matching algorithm, has a strong advantage in radial distortion and brightness changes. However, CT is noise-sensitive because it compares the brightness of a single central pixel based on the brightness values of neighborhood pixels within a matching window. Star-census transform, which compares the brightness of pixels separated by a certain distance along a symmetrical pattern within the matching window, is presented. The proposed method can select the distance between the pixels for comparison and comparison patterns. The experiment results show that the proposed method yields a better performance than the previous CT methods. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.