Hybrid exposure for depth imaging of a time-of-flight depth sensor

Abstract

A time-of-flight(ToF) depth sensor produces noisy range data due to scene properties such as surface materials and reflectivity. Sensor measurement frequently includes either a saturated or severely noisy depth and effective depth accuracy is far below its ideal specification. In this paper, we propose a hybrid exposure technique for depth imaging in a ToF sensor so to improve the depth quality. Our method automatically determines an optimal depth for each pixel using two exposure conditions. To show that our algorithm is effective, we compare the proposed algorithm with two conventional methods in qualitative and quantitative manners showing the superior performance of proposed algorithm. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America