ISSUES IN THE DESIGN OF STUDIES TO TEST THE EFFECTIVENESS OF STEREO IMAGING

Recently, there has been a great increase in interest in using three d imensional stereoscopic displays to provide viewers with realistic 3D views of objects of interest, Some applications where stereoscopic dis plays are becoming popular include medical visualization, visualizatio n of meteorological data, and various virtual reality applications. To quantify the effectiveness of stereoscopic systems over conventional monoscopic systems, well-designed experiments and data analysis method s are necessary. This task requires the combined effort of application scientists and experts in experimental design, Lack of interdisciplin ary collaboration is a primary weakness of many stereoscopic display s tudies, resulting in the neglect of many important but subtle experime ntal issues, In this paper, we discuss specific issues that arise in t he design of studies to determine the effectiveness of digital stereo imagery, Issues concerning statistical analysis of the experimental da ta are also discussed, References to related literature from engineeri ng, computer graphics, and psychophysics are given, The issues develop ed herein provide a guideline for the design of studies to compare obs erver performance when using different imaging modalities.