Novel solutions for side information generation and fusion in multiview DVC

One of the key problems in distributed video coding is the generation of side information. This task consists of producing an estimate of an image with some neighboring ones, such as those taken by the same camera at different time instants, or, in the case of multiview setups, images taken at the same time instant by different cameras. If both estimates are available, a further problem arises, which is how to merge them in order to create a single side information. This problem is very relevant since a good estimate of the unknown image will require only a few bits to be corrected. Considering a multiview distributed video-coding setup, we propose a novel technique for inter-view interpolation based on occlusion prediction, a new fusion technique from multiple estimates, and finally an adaptive validation step for switching among the three possible side information images: temporal, inter-view, and fusion. We provide a comprehensive set of experimental results, which indicate bit rate reductions of more than 9% in average; moreover, we observe much more consistent results with respect to state-of-the-art techniques.