Robust Depth Estimation from Auto Bracketed Images

Abstract

As demand for advanced photographic applications on hand-held devices grows, these electronics require the capture of high quality depth. However, under low-light conditions, most devices still suffer from low imaging quality and inaccurate depth acquisition. To address the problem, we present a robust depth estimation method from a short burst shot with varied intensity (i.e., Auto Bracketing) or strong noise (i.e., High ISO). We introduce a geometric transformation between flow and depth tailored for burst images, enabling our learning-based multi-view stereo matching to be performed effectively. We then describe our depth estimation pipeline that incorporates the geometric transformation into our residual flow network. It allows our framework to produce an accurate depth map even with a bracketed image sequence. We demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods for various datasets captured by a smartphone and a DSLR camera. Moreover, we show that the estimated depth is applicable for image quality enhancement and photographic editing.