Abstract
Crosstalk in stereoscopic displays is defined as the leakage of one eye's image into the image of the other eye. All popular commercial stereoscopic viewing systems, including the ones used in movie theaters, suffer from crosstalk to some extent. It has been shown that crosstalk causes image distortions and reduces image quality. Moreover, it decreases visual comfort and affects one's ability to discriminate object shape and judge the relative depth of two objects. These results have potentially important implications for the quality and the accuracy of depth percepts in 3d display systems. To asses this hypothesis directly, we have explored the effect of crosstalk on the perceived magnitude of depth in a variety of stereoscopic stimuli. We found that with simple synthetic images increasing crosstalk beyond four percent resulted in a significant decrease in the magnitude of perceived depth, especially for larger disparities. This degradation was largely independent of the spatial separation of the ghost image. Further, we found qualitatively and quantitatively similar detrimental effects of crosstalk on perceived depth in complex images of natural scenes. The consistency of the negative impact of crosstalk, regardless of image complexity, suggests that it is not ameliorated by the presence of pictorial depth cues. We have recommended that display manufacturers keep crosstalk levels below the critical value of four percent to achieve optimal depth quality.
Meeting abstract presented at OSA Fall Vision 2012