Methods and apparatus for stereoscopic image encoding and decoding are described. Left and right eye images are encoded following an entropy reduction operation being applied to one of the eye images when there is a difference between the left and right images of an image pair. Information about regions of negative parallax within the entropy reduced image of an image pair is encoded along with the images. Upon decoding a sharpening filter is applied to the image in an image pair which was subjected to the entropy reduction operation. In addition edge enhancement filtering is performed on the regions of the recovered entropy reduced image which are identified in the encoded image data as regions of negative parallax. Interleaving of left and right eye images at the input of the encoder combined with entropy reduction allows for efficient encoding, storage, and transmission of 3D images.

A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a media processor having a controller to record stereoscopic media content supplied by a multimedia system, receive from a communication device a request for the recorded stereoscopic media content, determine rendering capabilities of the communication device, generate transcoded content by transcoding the recorded stereoscopic media content according to the rendering capabilities of the communication device, and transmit to the communication device the transcoded content. Other embodiments are disclosed and contemplated.

A medical image diagnosis system according to an embodiment includes a determining unit, a rendering processing unit, and an output unit. The determining unit is configured to, based on information related to a stereoscopic function of a display unit connected to an output target apparatus serving as an output target, determine a parallax image number of images that are for realizing a stereoscopic view and are to be displayed by the display unit. The rendering processing unit is configured to generate rendering images corresponding to the parallax image number, by performing a rendering process on volume data that represents three-dimensional medical images. The output unit is configured to output the rendering images corresponding to the parallax image number to the output target apparatus, as the images that are for realizing the stereoscopic view and are to be simultaneously displayed by the display unit.

The disclosure relates to a method for providing a multimedia message service from a server or relay to a user agent in a multimedia network, the method comprising: determining a video content characteristic of a video content by the server or relay; determining display and/or decoding capabilities of the user agent; signaling options of the video content to the user agent; and providing the video content depending on the display and/or decoding capabilities and depending on an option selected via the user agent from the signaled options of the video content.

A method and an apparatus for controlling naked eye stereoscopic display and a display device are provided. The method includes detecting a stereoscopic display instruction of a display device, where the display device is divided into a plurality of view point regions, each of the plurality of view point regions includes at least two view points; and adjusting a greyscale value of a sub-pixel corresponding to one of adjacent view points belonging respectively to adjacent ones of the plurality of view point regions to a preset greyscale value when the stereoscopic display instruction of the display device is detected so that a user can observe a plane image in a reverse-scopic region.

A system configured to support video formatting without a priori knowledge of video formatting requirements of a display device. The system relies on video information transmitted from the display device to a source device to facilitate determining the video formatting requirements of the display device. The system can be used within any television network, gaming network, and content sourcing network where it may be advantageous to deploy a source device that can support formatting requirements for a plurality of different display types.

Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture (e.g., physical storage media) to generate optical flow maps based on foreground and background image segmentation are disclosed. Example apparatus disclosed herein are to generate a reference optical flow map based on a stereo pair of background images corresponding to a first camera field-of-view and a second camera field-of-view, and generate a first optical flow map based on a stereo pair of input images corresponding to the first camera field-of-view and the second camera field-of-view. Disclosed example apparatus are also to combine the reference optical flow map and the first optical flow map based on an alpha matte to generate a second optical flow map associated with the stereo pair of input images, the alpha matte representative of segmentation of at least one of the stereo pair of input images into foreground and background regions.

A system is provided for use with a video input signal and a video unit. The video input signal can be one of a two dimensional video signal and a three dimensional video signal. The video unit can display a three dimensional video and a two dimensional video. The system includes a receiver portion, a processing portion, a switching portion and an output portion. The receiver portion can receive the video input signal. The processing portion can output a first signal in a first mode of operation and can output a second signal in a second mode of operation, wherein the first signal is based on the video input signal and the second signal is based on the video input signal. The switching portion can switch the processing portion from the first mode of operation to the second mode of operation. The output portion can provide an output signal to the video unit, wherein the output signal is based on the first signal when the processing portion operates in the first mode of operation and wherein the output signal is based on the second signal when the processing portion operates in the second mode of operation. The first signal includes a two dimensional video signal, whereas the second signal includes a three dimensional video signal.

Methods and apparatus for splitting light received from at least one subject into at least first and second components of light, converting the first component of light into a first electrical signal representing a base image of the at least one subject, dispersing the second component of light into at least a right component of light and a left component of light; converting the right component of light into a second electrical signal representing a right detection image at a first angle; and converting the left component of light into a third electrical signal representing a left detection image at a second angle different from the first angle. Additionally, the right detection image may be used to transform the base image into a right parallax image, and the left detection image may be used to transform the base image into a left parallax image.

A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a media processor having a controller to record stereoscopic media content supplied by a multimedia system, receive from a communication device a request for the recorded stereoscopic media content, determine rendering capabilities of the communication device, generate transcoded content by transcoding the recorded stereoscopic media content according to the rendering capabilities of the communication device, and transmit to the communication device the transcoded content. Other embodiments are disclosed and contemplated.