The visibility of color breakup and a means to reduce it

Abstract

Color breakup is an artifact seen on displays that present colors sequentially. When the eye tracks a moving object on such a display, different colors land on different places on the retina, and this gives rise to visible color fringes at the object's leading and trailing edges. Interestingly, color breakup is also observed when the eye is stationary and an object moves by. Using a novel psychophysical procedure, we measured breakup both when viewers tracked and did not track a moving object. Breakup was somewhat more visible in the tracking than in the non-tracking condition. The video frames contained three subframes, one each for red, green, and blue. We spatially offset the green and blue stimuli in the second and third subframes, respectively, to find the values that minimized breakup. In the tracking and non-tracking conditions, spatial offsets of Δx/3 in the second subframe (where Δx is the displacement of the object in one frame) and 2Δx/3 in the third eliminated breakup. Thus, this method offers a way to minimize or even eliminate breakup whether the viewer is tracking or not. We suggest ways to implement the method with real video content. We also developed a color-breakup model based on spatiotemporal filtering in color-opponent pathways in early vision. We found close agreement between the model's predictions and the experimental results. The model can be used to predict breakup for a wide variety of conditions.

Time-Sequential Working Wavelength-Selective Filter for Flat Autostereoscopic Displays

“…The temporal sequence of differently-directed image information increases the visible image resolution. The simultaneous use of all primary colors of the display for the wavelength selection avoids the color breakup [40] known from color-sequential display modes [41].…”

Stereoscopic 3D display with color interlacing improves perceived depth

“…This can yield the visual impression that colors in a moving object are spatially misaligned, a phenomenon called color breakup [23][24][25]. Color breakup occurs when colors are presented sequentially (as in single-chip DLP projectors [26,27]).…”

“…One might expect the two color components to add binocularly yielding little color breakup. We investigated the salience of color breakup with color-interlacing protocol in some pilot testing using the procedure described in Johnson et al [25]. Color breakup was not observed when the object moved slowly but became more and more salient as the object moved faster.…”

Image content adaptive color breakup index for field sequential color displays using a dominant visual saliency method

“…However, the relative velocity between the displayed images and an observer's eyes, which may be induced by saccadic eye movements or a smooth pursuit of a moving object, causes the sequentially produced primary color fields to imperfectly overlap on the retina. Therefore, FSC displays suffer from an important drawback: color breakup . Figure (c) illustrates the basic mechanism of color breakup and a representation of a distorted retinal image containing the color breakup, which appears as rainbow‐like fringes that disturb an observer's viewing.…”

“…As color breakup degrades image quality, causes discomfort to observers, and consequently impairs the application of FSC displays, a number of studies have been dedicated to this field, which can be roughly grouped into two research lines. The first line of research seeks approaches that can suppress the color breakup.…”