A computational measure of saliency of the shape of 3D objects

Abstract

The shape of an object is a basic characteristic that when attracts the viewers’ attention represents a salient feature. In this paper we propose a computational measure of saliency of the shape of 3D objects in virtual reality, based on the proportion of empty and full space within its bounding box. This measure of saliency is part of a computational model aimed to the selection of appropriate reference objects to facilitate the location of objects within a 3D virtual environment. An experiment was conducted to understand to which extent the proposed measure of saliency matches with the people’s subjective perception of saliency; results showed a good performance of the metric.