Subjective quality assessment of stereo image compression based on stereoscopic fusion in binocular vision

Stereo image transmission needs a nominal doubling of the bandwidth of the video signal, but the additional savings in bandwidth can be obtained by utilizing properties of the human visual system. Embarking from human visual perception and binocular stereo imaging mechanism, this study proposes a new subjective assessment method of the quality of stereo image compression on the basis of the characteristics of human binocular vision and the psychophysics of stereoscopic fusion. Specifically, the present study explored the response of the human visual system to mixed-compressed stereo image sequences, in which one eye view was spatially and temporally compressed but the depth perception was unaffected. This method exploited the correlation between the left and right frames of the given sequence that can not only help achieving certain efficiency of stereo image transmission but also facilitate the consistency of the directly intuitive output evaluation value and the sensitivity of stereoscopic perception, which could also overcome the shortcomings of the traditional subjective quality evaluation method that restricted by subjective rating system, exhibits good feasibility and effectiveness.