Classification and simulation of stereoscopic artifacts in mobile 3DTV content

Abstract
We identify, categorize and simulate artifacts which might occur during delivery stereoscopic video to mobile devices. We consider the stages of 3D video delivery dataflow: content creation, conversion to the desired format (multiview or source-plus-depth), coding/decoding, transmission, and visualization on 3D display. Human 3D vision works by assessing various depth cues - accommodation, binocular depth cues, pictorial cues and motion parallax. As a consequence any artifact which modifies these cues impairs the quality of a 3D scene. The perceptibility of each artifact can be estimated through subjective tests. The material for such tests needs to contain various artifacts with different amounts of impairment. We present a system for simulation of these artifacts. The artifacts are organized in groups with similar origins, and each group is simulated by a block in a simulation channel. The channel introduces the following groups of artifacts: sensor limitations, geometric distortions caused by camera optics, spatial and temporal misalignments between video channels, spatial and temporal artifacts caused by coding, transmission losses, and visualization artifacts. For the case of source-plus-depth representation, artifacts caused by format conversion are added as well.