Subjective Evaluation of Low Distortion Coded Light Fields with View Synthesis

Abstract: Light field technology is a powerful imaging method that captures both the intensity and direction of light rays in a scene, enabling the reconstruction of 3D information and supporting a range of unique applications. However, light fields produce vast amounts of data, making efficient compression essential for their practical use. View synthesis plays a key role in light field technology by enabling the generation of new views, yet its interaction with compression has not been fully explored. In this work, a subjective analysis of the effect of view synthesis on light field compression is conducted. To achieve this, a sparsely sampled light field is created by dropping views from an original light field. Both light fields are then encoded using JPEG Pleno and VVC. View synthesis is then applied to the compressed sampled light field to reconstruct the same number of views as the original. The subjective evaluation follows the proposed JPEG AIC-3 test methodology designed to assess the quality of high-fidelity compressed images. This test consists of two test stimuli displayed side-by-side, each alternating between an original and a coded view, creating a flicker effect on both sides. The user must choose which side has the stronger flicker and, therefore, the lower quality. Using these subjective results, a selection of metrics is validated.