The Effect of Crosstalk on the Perceived Depth From Disparity and Monocular Occlusions

Crosstalk in stereoscopic displays is defined as the leakage of one eye's image into the image of the other eye. All popular commercial stereoscopic systems suffer from crosstalk to some extent. Studies show that crosstalk causes distortions, reduces image quality and visual comfort, and increases perceived workload. Moreover, there is evidence that crosstalk effects depth perception from disparity. In the present paper we present two experiments. The first addresses the effect of crosstalk on the perceived magnitude of depth from disparity. The second examines the effect of crosstalk on the magnitude of depth perceived from monocular occlusions. Our data show that crosstalk has a detrimental effect on depth perceived from both cues, but it has a stronger effect on depth from monocular occlusions. Our findings taken together with previous results suggest that crosstalk, even in modest amounts, noticeably degrades the quality of stereoscopic images.