Abstract: In this paper, we propose a dense stereo algorithm based on the census transform and improved dynamic programming (DP). Traditional scanline-based DP algorithms are the most efficient ones among global algorithms, but are well-known to be affected by the streak effect. To solve this problem, we improve the traditional three-state DP algorithm by taking advantage of an extended version of sequential vertical consistency constraint. Using this method, we increase the accuracy of the disparity map greatly. Optimizations have been made so that the computational cost is only increased by about 20%, and the additional memory needed for the improvement is negligible. Experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms many state-of-the-art algorithms with similar efficiency on Middlebury College's stereo Web site. Besides, the algorithm is robust enough for image pairs with utterly different contrasts by using of census transform as the basic match metric.