Efficient edge-preserving interpolation and in-loop filters for depth map compression

Due to abrupt signal changes on object boundaries, a depth video compressed by conventional video coding standards often introduces serious coding artifacts over the boundaries, which severely affect the quality of a synthesized view. In this paper, we propose an edge-preserving depth interpolation filter based on weighted mode filtering to provide more accurate fractional-pixel samples in the motion-compensated interpolation for an effective inter-coding of the depth video. In addition, an efficient post-processing method is also proposed to further suppress the coding artifacts on the depth video and utilized as an in-loop filter. Experimental results show the proposed methods can significantly improve the synthesized view quality in terms of both objective and subjective measures.