Visual Comfort Enhancement for Stereoscopic Video Based on Binocular Fusion Characteristics

A well-known problem in stereoscopic videos is visual fatigue. However, conventional depth adjustment methods provide little guidance in deciding the amount of depth control or determining the condition for depth control. We propose a depth adjustment method based on binocular fusion characteristics, where the fusion time is used as the parameter for adjustment. Visual comfort enhancement is implemented with the horizontal image shift approach for depth adjustment. The speeded-up robust feature is used to estimate maximum disparity and disparity distribution, while a face detection algorithm is used to estimate the viewing distance with a single web camera. Binocular fusion characteristics are acquired in advance by measuring the time required for fusion under various conditions, including foreground disparity, background disparity, and focal distance for random-dot stereograms. Finally, a subjective evaluation is conducted in fixed and free-to-move viewing conditions, and the results show that comfortable videos were generated based on the proposed depth adjustment method.