JPEG2000 encoding with perceptual distortion control.

In this paper, a new encoding approach is proposed to control the JPEG2000 encoding in order to reach a desired perceptual quality. The new method is based on a vision model that incorporates various masking effects of human visual perception and a perceptual distortion metric that takes spatial and spectral summation of individual quantization errors into account. Compared with the conventional rate-based distortion minimization JPEG2000 encoding, the new method provides a way to generate consistent quality images at a lower bit rate.     

一种基于最小可察觉失真的立体图像质量客观评价方法

立体图像质量是评价立体视频系统性能的有效途径,而如何利用人类视觉特性对立体图像质量进行有效的评价是目前的研究难点。本文通过分析最小可察觉失真(JND,just noticeable distortion)视觉感知模型,并结合反映图像结构信息的奇异值矢量,提出了一种基于JND的立体图像质量客观评价方法。评价方法由图像质量评价和深度感知评价两部分组成,首先提取反映图像质量和深度感知的特征信息作为立体图像特征信息,然后根据立体图像的不同失真类型情况对其特征进行融合,通过支持向量回归(SVR,support vector Regression)预测得出立体图像质量的客观评价值。实验结果表明,采用本文提出的客观评价方法对立体数据测试库进行评价,在不同失真类型或混合失真评价结果中,Pearson线性相关系数(CC)值均在0.94以上,Spearman等级相关系数(SROCC)值均在0.92以上,符合人眼视觉特性,能够很好地预测人眼对立体图像的主观感知。     

A weighted full-reference image quality assessment based on visual saliency

In full reference image quality assessment (IQA), the images without distortion are usually employed as reference, while the structures in both reference images and distorted images are ignored and all pixels are equally treated. In addition, the role of human visual system (HVS) is not taken account into subjective IQA metric. In this paper, a weighted full-reference image quality metric is proposed, where a weight imposed on each pixel indicates its importance in IQA. Furthermore, the weights can be estimated via visual saliency computation, which can approximate the subjective IQA via exploiting the HVS. In the experiments, the proposed metric is compared with several objective IQA metrics on LIVE release 2 and TID 2008 database. The results demonstrate that SROCC and PLCC of the proposed metric are 0.9647 and 0.9721, respectively,which are higher than other methods and it only takes 427.5 s, which is lower than that of most other methods.     

Gamma rate theory for causal rate control in source coding and video coding

The rate distortion function in information theory provides performance bounds for lossy source coding. However, it is not clear how to causally encode a Gaussian sequence under rate constraints while achieving R–D optimality. This problem has significant implications in the design of rate control for video communication. To address this problem, we take distortion fluctuation into account and develop a new theory, called gamma rate theory, to quantify the trade-off between rate and distortion fluctuation. The gamma rate theory implies that, to evaluate the performance of causal rate controls in source coding, the traditional R–D metric needs to be replaced by a new GRD metric. The gamma rate theory identifies the trade-off between quality fluctuation and bandwidth, which is not known previously. To validate the gamma rate theory, we design a rate control algorithm for video coding; our experimental results demonstrate the utility of the gamma rate theory in video coding.     

基于视觉显著失真度的图像质量自适应评价方法

针对结构相似(SSIM)图像质量评价算法没有考虑人眼视觉多通道性和对图像高失真评价的不稳定性,提出一种基于视觉显著失真度的图像质量自适应融合(VSAP)评价方法。该方法首先采用log-Gabor滤波提取图像的高频、中频及低频3层视觉特征,基于log-Gabor变换尺度和方向权重系数计算特征值的相似度;然后基于视觉阈值多分辨性迭加计算出特征值的失真度;最后,根据视觉失真度自适应融合相似度评价与失真度评价获得图像质量的最终客观评价。实验结果表明,VSAP方法不但对图像不同类型失真的客观评价与主观感知具有更高的相关性,而且3个主要指标斯皮尔曼等级相关系数(SROCC)、曲线拟合相关系数(CC)和均方根误差(RMSE)对图像不同水平失真的整体评价性能更稳定,明显优于其它评价方法。     

一种基于HSV色彩空间的OLED低功耗方法

为了降低有机发光器件(OLED)的功耗,同时又保证显示图像的质量,提出一种基于色调、 饱和度和亮度(HSV,hue,saturation and value)色彩空 间的OLED低功耗方法。通过整合亮度调节(VS)和 饱和度调节(SS)降低显示图像的功耗,应用感兴趣区域(ROI,region of interest) 到图像边界逐级调节技术提升 图像质量,采用平均结构相似度指数(MSSIM,mean structu ral similarity index)对原始输入图像和输出图像在亮度、对比度和结构相似性上进行比 较以评价图像相似程度,达到 保持较高图像质量的同时降低功耗的目的。实验结果表明,图像渐变级数level为15时, 本文提出的亮度与饱和度整合调节(VSI)方法在保持图像的ROI具有80.31%的相似度的同时节省了57.93%的OLED功耗。     

Entropy-Based Distortion Measure and Bit Allocation for Wavelet Image Compression

Quality criteria for image coding are often based on mean square error. However, this is not always a relevant measure of visual quality at low bit rates. Here, we investigate the properties of a distortion measure based on the conditional differential entropy of the input signal given its quantized value. The proposed measure appears to be a correct representation of the amount of information lost by quantization. An adaptive bit allocation algorithm is proposed in order to take advantage of this criterion. Experimental results illustrate the behavior of the proposed distortion measure and exhibit interesting visual properties for low bit-rate subband image coding.     

Adaptive image coding with perceptual distortion control

This paper presents a discrete cosine transform (DCT)-based locally adaptive perceptual image coder, which discriminates between image components based on their perceptual relevance for achieving increased performance in terms of quality and bit rate. The new coder uses a locally adaptive perceptual quantization scheme based on a tractable perceptual distortion metric. Our strategy is to exploit human visual masking properties by deriving visual masking thresholds in a locally adaptive fashion. The derived masking thresholds are used in controlling the quantization stage by adapting the quantizer reconstruction levels in order to meet the desired target perceptual distortion. The proposed coding scheme is flexible in that it can be easily extended to work with any subband-based decomposition in addition to block-based transform methods. Compared to existing perceptual coding methods, the proposed perceptual coding method exhibits superior performance in terms of bit rate and distortion control. Coding results are presented to illustrate the performance of the presented coding scheme.     

Video fusion performance evaluation based on structural similarity and human visual perception

In order to evaluate different video fusion algorithms in temporal stability and consistency as well as in spatial information transfer, a novel objective video fusion quality metric is proposed with the structural similarity (SSIM) index and the perception characteristics of human visual system (HVS) in this paper. Firstly, for each frame, two sub-indices, i.e., the spatial fusion quality index and the temporal fusion quality index, are defined by the weighted local SSIM indices. Secondly, for the current frame, an individual-frame fusion quality measure is obtained by integrating the above two sub-indices. Lastly, the proposed global video fusion metric is constructed as the weighted average of all the individual-frame fusion quality measures. In addition, according to the perception characteristics of HVS, some local and global spatial-temporal information, such as local variance, pixel movement, global contrast, background motion and so on, is employed to define the weights in the proposed metric. Several sets of experimental results demonstrate that the proposed metric can evaluate different video fusion algorithms accurately, and the evaluation results coincide with the subjective results well.     

基于边缘差异的虚拟视图像质量评价方法

为了降低多视视频中的传输数据量,可适当减少包含纹理图及其对应深度图的多视数量,而在自由立体视频系统的终端采用基于深度图的绘制技术,生成新的虚拟视点。由于不准确的深度图估计、遮挡及合成算法等原因,合成虚拟视的边缘会出现高频噪声。对于这种特有的失真,用一般的评价方法并不能准确反映人眼的视觉感知。该文在分析失真虚拟视与原始视像素差异基础上,对各差异像素进行分类,并分配权重,提出了一种基于视觉加权的边缘差异质量评价方法,对边缘像素施加较高权重。经多视视频序列实验证明,该文方法相比于其它评价方法,能更好地预测人类视觉对虚拟视图像的主观感知。     

基于剪切波变换的光场图像质量评价方法

光场成像作为新一代成像技术可采集更丰富的视觉信息,但在其各个处理过程中都会引入失真导致光场图像主观质量的下降,因此需要设计与人类视觉系统(Human Visual System,HVS)保持一致的客观评价方法以自动评价光场图像的质量。本文提出了一种基于剪切波变换的光场图像全参考质量评价方法。首先,为了同时考虑光场的空间域和角度域失真,分别在光场视图和极平面图(Epipolar Plane Image,EPI)上提取特征。其次,在光场视图上进行剪切波变换后,分别提取局部相似性特征和全局统计特征。然后,在EPI上分别提取局部相似性特征和全局方向统计特征。最后,采用随机森林对以上特征进行池化得到最终质量预测值。在密集光场图像数据库中进行测试的实验结果表明,所提出方法优于现有的图像质量评价指标,与主观视觉评价结果的一致性较高。     

AdaBoost neural network and cyclopean view for no-reference stereoscopic image quality assessment

Stereoscopic imaging is widely used in many fields. In many scenarios, stereo images quality could be affected by various degradations, such as asymmetric distortion. Accordingly, to guarantee the best quality of experience, robust and accurate reference-less metrics are required for quality assessment of stereoscopic content. Most existing stereo no-reference Image Quality Assessment (IQA) models are not consistent with asymmetrical distortions. This paper presents a new no-reference stereoscopic image quality assessment metric using a human visual system (HVS) modeling and an advanced machine-learning algorithm. The proposed approach consists of two stages. In the first stage, cyclopean image is constructed considering the presence of binocular rivalry in order to cover the asymmetrically distorted part. In the second stage, gradient magnitude, relative gradient magnitude, and gradient orientation are extracted. These are used as a predictive source of information for the quality. In order to obtain the best overall performance against different databases, Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost) idea of machine learning combined with artificial neural network model has been adopted. The benchmark LIVE 3D phase-I, phase-II, and IRCCyN/IVC 3D databases have been used to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed metric performance achieves high consistency with subjective assessment and outperforms the blind stereo IQA over various types of distortion.     

A new objective stereoscopic image assessment model based on stereoscopic perception

In order to establish a stereoscopic image quality assessment method which is consistent with human visual perception, we propose an objective stereoscopic image quality assessment method. It takes into account the strong correlation and high degree of structural between pixels of image. This method contains two models. One is the quality synthetic assessment of left-right view images, which is based on human visual characteristics, we use the Singular Value Decomposition （SVD） that can represent the degree of the distortion, and combine the qualities of left and right images by the characteristics of binocular superposition. The other model is stereoscopic perception quality as- sessment, due to strong stability of image＇s singular value characteristics, we calculate the distance of the singular values and structural characteristic similarity of the absolute difference maps, and utilize the statistical value of the global error to evaluate stereoscopic perception. Finally, we combine two models to describe the stereoscopic image quality. Experimental results show that the correlation coefficients of the proposed assessment method and the human subjective perception are above 0.93, and the mean square errors are all less than 6.2, under JPEG, JP2K compression, Gaussian blurring, Gaussian white noise, H.264 coding distortion, and hybrid cross distortion. It indicates that the proposed stereoscopic objective method is consistent with human visual properties and also of availability.     

一种基于WBCT的自然图像质量评价方法

部分参考型图像质量评价的性能依赖于图像的特征提取和稀疏表示.WBCT(Wavelet-based Contourlet Transform)是一种无冗余度的图像稀疏表示方法,能有效地反映图像的视觉感知特性,可以用来捕捉由于图像失真而引起的视觉感知的变化.为此,结合部分参考型图像质量评价模型和WBCT,提出了一种自然图像质量客观评价方法.实验结果表明,利用该方法所得到的图像质量客观评价结果与主观评价结果之间具有很好的一致性,能准确地反映人眼对图像质量的主观感受.     

利用人眼视觉特性的图像结构差异性杂波度量

针对光电图像杂波效应对目标获取性能的影响,提出一种基于人眼视觉特性的图像结构差异性杂波度量。依据人眼对图像结构的高度自适应性以及图像质量评估领域广泛认可的图像结构的定义方法,计算目标和杂波的结构相似性;并根据人眼的视觉显著性原理,给出两种适用于结构相似性的显著性加权信息度量。采用外场实验对该杂波度量的合理性进行验证,得出基于该杂波度量的目标预测性能与外场目标获取性能,在均方根误差、相关性方面都优于现有的杂波度量的预测性能。     

Image database TID2013: Peculiarities,results and perspectives

This paper describes a recently created image database, TID2013, intended for evaluation of full-reference visual quality assessment metrics. With respect to TID2008, the new database contains a larger number (3000) of test images obtained from 25 reference images, 24 types of distortions for each reference image, and 5 levels for each type of distortion. Motivations for introducing 7 new types of distortions and one additional level of distortions are given; examples of distorted images are presented. Mean opinion scores (MOS) for the new database have been collected by performing 985 subjective experiments with volunteers (observers) from five countries (Finland, France, Italy, Ukraine, and USA). The availability of MOS allows the use of the designed database as a fundamental tool for assessing the effectiveness of visual quality. Furthermore, existing visual quality metrics have been tested with the proposed database and the collected results have been analyzed using rank order correlation coefficients between MOS and considered metrics. These correlation indices have been obtained both considering the full set of distorted images and specific image subsets, for highlighting advantages and drawbacks of existing, state of the art, quality metrics. Approaches to thorough performance analysis for a given metric are presented to detect practical situations or distortion types for which this metric is not adequate enough to human perception. The created image database and the collected MOS values are freely available for downloading and utilization for scientific purposes.     

Hierarchical content importance-based video quality assessment for HEVC encoded videos transmitted over LTE networks

To improve the accuracy of assessment, many previous works take into account the video content. However, these previous works just only consider the video content, but do not consider the location and importance of the degraded content. Thus, this paper takes into account not only the video content, but also the location and importance of the degraded content, and proposes a hierarchical content importance-based video quality assessment. Firstly, we propose to use the hierarchical content importance-based frame degradation rate (HFDR) metric to quantify the importance of degraded content hierarchically. Secondly, we propose to use the intra random access point (IRAP) loss rate (ILR) metric to quantify the impact of IRAP. Finally, the proposed HFDR metric and ILR metric are subsequently used to develop an objective video quality assessment model. The experimental results show that the predicted mean opinion score (MOS) of the proposed method highly correlates with the actual MOS.     

A ParaBoost stereoscopic image quality assessment (PBSIQA) system

The problem of stereoscopic image quality assessment, which finds applications in 3D visual content delivery such as 3DTV, is investigated in this work. Specifically, we propose a new ParaBoost (parallel-boosting) stereoscopic image quality assessment (PBSIQA) system. The system consists of two stages. In the first stage, various distortions are classified into a few types, and individual quality scorers targeting at a specific distortion type are developed. These scorers offer complementary performance in face of a database consisting of heterogeneous distortion types. In the second stage, scores from multiple quality scorers are fused to achieve the best overall performance, where the fuser is designed based on the parallel boosting idea borrowed from machine learning. Extensive experimental results are conducted to compare the performance of the proposed PBSIQA system with those of existing stereo image quality assessment (SIQA) metrics. The developed quality metric can serve as an objective function to optimize the performance of a 3D content delivery system.     

基于视频质量评价的时域失真测量

视频质量评价(VQA)对于视频处理应用有着重要影响.人眼视觉特性的时域掩蔽效应和时域失真波动是视频质量感知评价的关键因子.在已有的视频质量评价研究中,很少有考虑到时域失真波动对视频主观感知质量的影响.改进了传统的时域分析算法,并证明了视频质量评价算法中时域失真的有效性.