Binocular Rivalry - Psychovisual Challenge in Stereoscopic Video Error Concealment

Abstract: During Stereoscopic 3D (S3D) video transmission, one or both views can be affected by bit errors and packet losses caused by adverse channel conditions, delay or jitter. Typically, the Human Visual System (HVS) is incapable of aligning and fusing stereoscopic content if one view is affected by artefacts caused by compression, transmission and rendering with distorted patterns being perceived as alterations of the original which presents a shimmering effect known as binocular rivalry and is detrimental to a user's Quality of Experience (QoE). This study attempts to quantify the effects of binocular rivalry for stereoscopic videos. Existing approaches, in which one or more frames are lost in one or both views undergo error concealment, are implemented. Then, subjective testing is carried out on the error concealed 3D video sequences. The evaluations provided by these subjects were then combined and analysed using a standard Student t-test thus quantifying the impact of binocular rivalry and allowing the impact to be compared with that of monocular viewing. The main focus is implementing error-resilient video communication, avoiding the detrimental effects of binocular rivalry and improving the overall QoE of viewers.