Fast acquisition of dense depth data by a new structured light scheme

This paper introduces a new structured lighting scheme to obtain dense depth data fast and reliably. Its main idea is to use both features and continuous intensities organized in a hierarchical structure as the projection pattern. This hierarchical structure then guides the matching process. As a result, a dense depth map can be reliably acquired by grabbing only one image (or two images for better precision). Experimental results using a prototype system with two cameras and a lighting projector show that the proposed scheme is effective and efficient.