Visual masking phenomena with high dynamic range content

High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology (capture and display), can offer high levels of immersion through a dynamic range that meets and exceeds that of the Human Visual System (HVS). This increase in immersion comes at the cost of higher bitrate requirements, which necessitate the development of efficient HDR-relevant coding solutions. Efficient perception-based compression of HDR imagery requires models that capture accurately the various masking effects experienced by the HVS under HDR conditions, so that bits are not wasted coding redundant imperceptible information. In this paper we present two psychovisual experiments that we carried out with the aid of a high dynamic range display, in order to determine potential differences between Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) and HDR edge masking (EM) and luminance masking (LM) effects. The EM experimental results indicate that the visibility threshold is higher for the case of HDR content than SDR, especially on the dark background side of an edge. The LM experimental results suggest that the HDR visibility threshold is higher compared to SDR for both dark and bright luminance backgrounds.