Comparison of Interactive Subjective Methodologies for Light Field Quality Evaluation

The recent advances in light field acquisition and rendering technologies have attracted a lot of interest from the scientific community. Due to their large amount of data, efficient compression of light field content is of paramount importance for storage and delivery. Quality evaluation plays a major role in assessing the impact of compression on visual perception. In particular, subjective methodologies for light field quality assessment must be carefully designed to ensure reliable results. In this paper, we present and compare two different methodologies to evaluate visual quality of light field contents. Both methodologies allow users to interact with the content and to freely decide which viewpoints to visualize. However, in the second methodology a brief animation of the available viewpoints is presented prior to interaction in order to ensure the same experience for all subjects. The time and patterns of interaction of both methods are compared and analyzed through a rigorous analysis. Conclusions provide useful insights for selecting the most appropriate light field evaluation methodology.