Dense-CNN: Dense convolutional neural network for stereo matching using multiscale feature connection

Abstract In spite of the fact that convolutional neural network-based stereo matching models have shown good performance in both accuracy and robustness, the issue of image feature loss in regions of texture-less, complex scenes and occlusions remains. In this paper, we present a dense convolutional neural network-based stereo matching method with multiscale feature connection, named Dense-CNN. First, we construct a novel densely connected network with multiscale convolutional layers to extract rich image features, in which the merged multiscale features with context information are utilized to estimate the cost volume for stereo matching. Second, we plan a novel loss-function strategy to learn the network parameters more reasonably, which can develop the performance of the proposed Dense-CNN model on disparity computation. Finally, we run our Dense-CNN model on the Middlebury and KITTI databases to conduct a comprehensive comparison with several state-of-the-art approaches. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieved superior performance on computational accuracy and robustness of disparity estimation, especially achieving the significant benefit of feature preservation in ill-posed regions.