A prototype for practical eye-gaze corrected video chat on graphics hardware

Abstract

We present a fully functional prototype to convincingly restore eye contact between two video chat participants, with a minimal amount of constraints. The proposed six-fold camera setup is easily integrated into the monitor frame, and is used to interpolate an image as if its virtual camera captured the image through a transparent screen. The peer user has a large freedom of movement, resulting in system specifications that enable genuine practical usage. Our software framework thereby harnesses the powerful computational resources inside graphics hardware, to achieve real-time performance up to 30 frames per second for 800 x 600 resolution images. Furthermore, an optimal set of finetuned parameters are presented, that optimizes the end-to-end performance of the application, and therefore is still able to achieve high subjective visual quality.