Kolmogorov and Zabih’s Graph Cuts Stereo Matching Algorithm

Binocular stereovision estimates the three-dimensional shape of a scene from two photographs taken from different points of view. In rectified epipolar geometry, this is equivalent to a matching problem. This article describes a method proposed by Kolmogorov and Zabih in 2001, which puts forward an energy-based formulation. The aim is to minimize a four-term-energy. This energy is not convex and cannot be minimized except among a class of perturbations called expansion moves, in which case an exact minimization can be done with graph cuts techniques. One noteworthy feature of this method is that it handles occlusion: The algorithm detects points that cannot be matched with any point in the other image. In this method displacements are pixel accurate (no subpixel refinement).