Investigation of the effect of disparity-based asymmetrical filtering on stereoscopic video

摘要

Current binocular stereoscopic displays cause visual discomfort when objects with large disparities are present in the scene. One solution for improving visual comfort is synthetic depth of field processing, a technique which simulates the characteristics of the human visual system. With this technique, visual comfort is improved by blurring portions of the background and/or foreground in the scene. However, this technique has the drawback of degrading overall image quality because the blurring is typically applied to both left and right images. To lessen the visual discomfort caused by large disparities while maintaining high perceived image quality, we used a novel disparity-based asymmetrical filtering technique. Asymmetrical filtering, which refers to filtering applied to the image of one eye only, has been shown to maintain the sharpness of a stereoscopic image, provided that the amount of filtering is low. Disparity-based asymmetrical filtering uses the disparity information in a stereoscopic image to control the severity of blurring. We investigated the effects of this technique on stereoscopic video by measuring visual comfort and apparent sharpness. Our results indicate that disparity-based asymmetrical filtering does not always improve visual comfort but it maintains image quality.