A depth perception evaluation metric for immersive user experience towards 3D multimedia services

The interest of users towards three-dimensional (3D) video is gaining momentum due to the recent breakthroughs in 3D video entertainment, education, network, etc. technologies. In order to speed up the advancement of these technologies, monitoring quality of experience of the 3D video, which focuses on end user’s point of view rather than service-oriented provisions, becomes a central concept among the researchers. Thanks to the stereoscopic viewing ability of human visual system (HVS), the depth perception evaluation of the 3D video can be considered as one of the most critical parts of this central concept. Due to the lack of efficiently and widely utilized objective metrics in literature, the depth perception assessment can currently only be ensured by cost and time-wise troublesome subjective measurements. Therefore, a no-reference objective metric, which is highly effective especially for on the fly depth perception assessment, is developed in this paper. Three proposed algorithms (i.e., Z direction motion, structural average depth and depth deviation) significant for the HVS to perceive the depth of the 3D video are integrated together while developing the proposed metric. Considering the outcomes of the proposed metric, it can be clearly stated that the provision of better 3D video experience to the end users can be accelerated in a timely fashion for the Future Internet multimedia services.