Keypoint detection is a basic step in many computer vision algorithms aimed at recognition of objects, automatic navigation and analysis of biomedical images. Successful implementation of higher level image analysis tasks, however, is conditioned by reliable detection of characteristic image local regions termed keypoints. A large number of keypoint detection algorithms has been proposed and verified. In this paper we discuss the most important keypoint detection algorithms. The main part of this work is devoted to description of a keypoint detection algorithm we propose that incorporates depth information computed from stereovision cameras or other depth sensing devices. It is shown that filtering out keypoints that are context dependent, e.g. located at boundaries of objects can improve the matching performance of the keypoints which is the basis for object recognition tasks. This improvement is shown quantitatively by comparing the proposed algorithm to the widely accepted SIFT keypoint detector algorithm. Our study is motivated by a development of a system aimed at aiding the visually impaired in space perception and object identification.

In this paper, a modification of the graph-based depth estimation is presented. The purpose of proposed modification is to increase the quality of estimated depth maps, reduce the time of the estimation, and increase the temporal consistency of depth maps. The modification is based on the image segmentation using superpixels, therefore in the first step of the proposed modification a segmentation of previous frames is used in the currently processed frame in order to reduce the overall time of the depth estimation. In the next step, a depth map from the previous frame is used in the depth map optimization as the initial values of a depth map estimated for the current frame. It results in the better representation of silhouettes of objects in depth maps and in the reduced computational complexity of the depth estimation process. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed modification the authors performed the experiment for a set of multiview test sequences that varied in their content and an arrangement of cameras. The results of the experiments confirmed the increase of the depth maps quality — the quality of depth maps calculated with the proposed modification is higher than for the unmodified depth estimation method, apart from the number of the performed optimization cycles. Therefore, use of the proposed modification allows to estimate a depth of the better quality with almost 40% reduction of the estimation time. Moreover, the temporal consistency, measured through the reduction of the bitrate of encoded virtual views, was also considerably increased.