A Study on Visual Perception of Light Field Content

Abstract: The effective design of visual computing systems depends heavily on the anticipation of visual attention, or saliency. While visual attention is well investigated for conventional 2D images and video, it is nevertheless a very active research area for emerging immersive media. In particular, visual attention of light fields (light rays of a scene captured by a grid of cameras or micro lenses) has only recently become a focus of research. As they may be rendered and consumed in various ways, a primary challenge that arises is the definition of what visual perception of light field content should be. In this work, we present a visual attention study on light field content. We conducted perception experiments displaying them to users in various ways and collected corresponding visual attention data. Our analysis highlights characteristics of user behaviour in light field imaging applications. The light field data set and attention data are provided with this paper.