Assessment of Stereoscopic Crosstalk Perception

Stereoscopic three-dimensional (3-D) services do not always prevail when compared with their two-dimensional (2-D) counterparts, though the former can provide more immersive experience with the help of binocular depth. Various specific 3-D artefacts might cause discomfort and severely degrade the Quality of Experience (QoE). In this paper, we analyze one of the most annoying artefacts in the visualization stage of stereoscopic imaging, namely, crosstalk, by conducting extensive subjective quality tests. A statistical analysis of the subjective scores reveals that both scene content and camera baseline have significant impacts on crosstalk perception, in addition to the crosstalk level itself. Based on the observed visual variations during changes in significant factors, three perceptual attributes of crosstalk are summarized as the sensorial results of the human visual system (HVS). These are shadow degree, separation distance, and spatial position of crosstalk. They are classified into two categories: 2-D and 3-D perceptual attributes, which can be described by a Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) map and a filtered depth map, respectively. An objective quality metric for predicting crosstalk perception is then proposed by combining the two maps. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed metric has a high correlation (over 88%) when compared with subjective quality scores in a wide variety of situations.