3D video disparity scaling for preference and prevention of discomfort

One of the key issues associated with 3D TVs is the tradeoff between comfort and 3D visual impact. Big disparity is often preferred for strong visual impact but often lead to viewer discomfort depending on viewer's condition, display size and viewing distances. The algorithm proposed in this paper is to provide viewers a tool to adjust disparity according to the environment, contents and their preference in order to have more comfortable and higher quality 3D experiences. More specifically, given a planar stereoscopic display, the algorithm takes in a stereoscopic image pair that causes viewing discomfort/fatigue, and outputs a modified stereoscopic pair that causes less or no viewing discomfort/fatigue. The algorithm fulfills the functions of disparity estimation, occlusion detection, disparity adjustment and view synthesis. A novel pixel weighting mechanism in regularized-block-matching based disparity estimation helps improve the robustness, accuracy and speed of matching. Occlusion detection uses multiple cues in addition to matching errors to improve the accuracy. An accommodation/vergence mismatch visual model is used in disparity adjustment to predict discomfort/fatigue from the disparity information, the viewing conditions and display characteristics. The hole filling is in the disparity map of the new view instead of the new view itself to reduce the blurriness.

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