Transition of visual attention assessment in stereoscopic images with evaluation of subjective visual quality and discomfort

Through statistical analysis of the behaviors of human visual attention, we discovered that fixation behaviors are highly correlated with the degree to which the viewer experiences visual quality/discomfort with stereoscopic images. To quantify the correlation between visual attention and quality/discomfort with respect to various distortions and disparities, we explore a novel methodology called transition of visual attention (ToVA) that accounts for diverse low-level luminance, chrominance, and depth attributes of 3D images in eye-tracker experiments. Moreover, saliency entropy is defined in order to quantify the distribution of fixations for 3D images. Using saliency entropy, we interpret perceptual factors in accordance with the non-uniform resolution of the human eye and the stereoscopic limits caused by foveation and Panum's fusional area. We then measure ToVA in terms of relative saliency entropy using Kullback-Leibler divergence. To evaluate the effectiveness of ToVA, a successful example application is also provided for which ToVA is applied to obtain subjective measurements of the quality and discomfort experienced when viewing 3D displays, rather than relying on conventional subjective tests using a scoring system.