Improved seam carving for stereo image resizing

Abstract

When stereo images are shown in three-dimensional (3D) display devices of different aspect ratios, the resizing algorithm for single image could lead to shape and depth distortion of the stereo image's main content. This paper aims to propose a novel method for retargeting stereo image pairs without distorting important objects in the scene while still maintaining the consistency between the left and right images. We extended seam carving algorithm to stereo images. The novelty of our method is that important objects are determined by jointly considering the intensities of gradients and visual fusion area. The retargeted stereo pair has a feasible 3D interpretation that is similar to the original one. Our method protected the important content and reduced the visual distortion in each of the images as well as the depth distortion. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate that the proposed method effectively guaranteed the geometric consistency of resized stereo images.