Relationship between Phase and Energy Methods for Disparity Computation
Ning Qian and Samual Mikaelian, Neural Computation 2000, 12:279-292.
Download the full paper
(compressed PostScript file, 0.07MB)
(PDF file)
Abstract
The phase and energy methods for computing binocular disparity maps
from stereograms are motivated differently, have different
physiological relevances, and involve different computational steps.
Nevertheless, we demonstrate that at the final stages where disparity
values are made explicit, the simplest versions of the two methods are
exactly equivalent. The equivalence also holds when the
quadrature-pair construction in the energy method is replaced with a
more physiologically plausible phase-averaging step. The equivalence
fails, however, when the phase-difference receptive field model is
replaced by the position-shift model. Additionally, intermediate
results from the two methods are always quite distinct. In
particular, the energy method generates a distributed disparity
representation similar to that found in the visual cortex while the
phase method does not. Finally, more elaborate versions of the two
methods are in general not equivalent. We also briefly compare these
two methods with some other stereo models in the literature.
Back to Qian Lab Home Page