Mayan Anaglyph · 2009-12-06 13:26 by Black in Graphics Programming

My semester thesis in Software Engineering was titled Mayan. This by itself is as non-descriptive as it can get, but it basically is an improved method for anaglyph stereo. The improvement was to allow for better color perception and preservation while achieving superior fusion.

Stereoscopic Images?

Stereoscopic images are pictures that can be seen in 3D, they contain data from both eyes’ viewpoints. Various technologies exist to produce, store, display and perceive such images. In this article am writing about anaglyph, color encoded stereo.

How does it work?

Almost all color display technology these days works by mixing three color channels, red, green and blue. Due to the limited sensory equipment humans possess, this is enough to imitate a wide range of the visible color spectrum. The existence of three channels is used in traditional anaglyph, it displays the image for one eye in red only, for the other eye in green and blue, which appears cyan. (There are many methods to mix the images that preserve different aspects of the image)

Mayan displays the left image in the Magenta plane, red and blue. The right image in the Cyan plane, green and blue. The blue channel is therefore shared. Having two channels for each eye makes color perception much better. Of course the visibility from both sides’ blue causes crosstalk, but due to shortcomings in human physiology, blue can not be perceived as sharp as other colors, so the impact is lessened.

Fusion vs. Rivalry

Fusion is achieved when both the left and right image are perceived by the correct eye, and the brain considers them actual data seen from different viewpoints and fuses them to a single 3D impression. It is easy to fuse on images that contain fine structure that exist in both viewpoints.

Rivalry is when the images can not be fused and the brain alternates between perceiving only the left and only the right image. It can occur when the two viewpoints differ too much, or there is not enough structure to fuse on.

The Mayan algorithm has a tuning parameter to allow easier fusion or better color perception. It influences how much the pictures are desaturated and mixed into the respective side’s channel.

And after all that talk, here’s my thesis paper. It contains a more detailed description of the mixing and some analyses of the crosstalk and possible mitigation strategies.