A near-touch interface is provided that utilizes stereo cameras and a series of targeted structured light tessellations, emanating from the screen as a light source and incident on objects in the field-of-view. After radial distortion from a series of wide-angle lenses is mitigated, a surface-based spatio-temporal stereo algorithm is utilized to estimate initial depth values. Once these values are calculated, a subsequent refinement step may be applied in which light source tessellations are used to flash a structure onto targeted components of the scene, where initial near-interaction disparity values have been calculated. The combination of a spherical stereo algorithm, and smoothing with structured light source tessellations, provides for a very reliable and fast near-field depth engine, and resolves issues that are associated with depth estimates for embedded solutions of this approach.