Apparent sharpness of 3D video when one eye's view is more blurry.

When the images presented to each eye differ in sharpness, the fused percept remains relatively sharp. Here, we measure this effect by showing stereoscopic videos that have been blurred for one eye, or both eyes, and psychophysically determining when they appear equally sharp. For a range of blur magnitudes, the fused percept always appeared significantly sharper than the blurrier view. From these data, we investigate to what extent discarding high spatial frequencies from just one eye's view reduces the bandwidth necessary to transmit perceptually sharp 3D content. We conclude that relatively high-resolution video transmission has the most potential benefit from this method

User-centered Virtual Environment Assessment And Design For Cognitive Rehabilitation Applications

Virtual environment (VE) design for cognitive rehabilitation necessitates a new methodology to ensure the validity of the resulting rehabilitation assessment. We propose that benchmarking the VE system technology utilizing a user-centered approach should precede the VE construction. Further, user performance baselines should be measured throughout testing as a control for adaptive effects that may confound the metrics chosen to evaluate the rehabilitation treatment. To support these claims we present data obtained from two modules of a user-centered head-mounted display (HMD) assessment battery, specifically resolution visual acuity and stereoacuity. Resolution visual acuity and stereoacuity assessments provide information about the image quality achieved by an HMD based upon its unique system parameters. When applying a user-centered approach, we were able to quantify limitations in the VE system components (e.g., low microdisplay resolution) and separately point to user characteristics (e.g., changes in dark focus) that may introduce error in the evaluation of VE based rehabilitation protocols. Based on these results, we provide guidelines for calibrating and benchmarking HMDs. In addition, we discuss potential extensions of the assessment to address higher level usability issues. We intend to test the proposed framework within the Human Experience Modeler (HEM), a testbed created at the University of Central Florida to evaluate technologies that may enhance cognitive rehabilitation effectiveness. Preliminary results of a feasibility pilot study conducted with a memory impaired participant showed that the HEM provides the control and repeatability needed to conduct such technology comparisons. Further, the HEM affords the opportunity to integrate new brain imaging technologies (i.e., functional Near Infrared Imaging) to evaluate brain plasticity associated with VE based cognitive rehabilitation

A luminance-contrast-aware disparity model and applications

Binocular disparity is one of the most important depth cues used by the human visual system. Recently developed stereo-perception models allow us to successfully manipulate disparity in order to improve viewing comfort, depth discrimination as well as stereo content compression and display. Nonetheless, all existing models neglect the substantial influence of luminance on stereo perception. Our work is the first to account for the interplay of luminance contrast (magnitude/frequency) and disparity and our model predicts the human response to complex stereo-luminance images. Besides improving existing disparity-model applications (e.g., difference metrics or compression), our approach offers new possibilities, such as joint luminance contrast and disparity manipulation or the optimization of auto-stereoscopic content. We validate our results in a user study, which also reveals the advantage of considering luminance contrast and its significant impact on disparity manipulation techniques.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CGV-1111415