A methodology for visually lossless compression of monochrome stereoscopic 3D images is proposed. Visibility thresholds are measured for quantization distortion in JPEG2000. These thresholds are found to be functions of not only spatial frequency, but also of wavelet coefficient variance, as well as the gray level in both the left and right images. To avoid a daunting number of measurements during subjective experiments, a model for visibility thresholds is developed. The left image and right image of a stereo pair are then compressed jointly using the visibility thresholds obtained from the proposed model to ensure that quantization errors in each image are imperceptible to both eyes. This methodology is then demonstrated via a particular 3D stereoscopic display system with an associated viewing condition. The resulting images are visually lossless when displayed individually as 2D images, and also when displayed in stereoscopic 3D mode.

With consumer-grade 3D displays becoming widely available, stereoscopic 3D imaging has received increased attention over the last few years. Since a left eye and a right eye image are contained in a stereo pair, stereoscopic imaging requires double the amount of data compared to 2D images. Therefore, efficient data compression techniques are especially critical in these applications. In this paper, we propose a method to determine visibility thresholds (VTs) for 3D displays with active shutter glasses. These VTs are then used in a novel visually lossless compression method for monochrome stereoscopic 3D images.