An automatic image quality assessment technique incorporating higher level perceptual factors
Wilfried M. Osberger, Neil W. Bergmann, Anthony John Maeder · 2002
We present an objective image quality assessment technique which is based on the properties of the human visual system (HVS). It consists of two major components: an early vision model (multi-channel and designed specifically for complex natural images), and a visual attention model which indicates regions of interest in a scene through the use of importance maps. Visible errors are then weighted, depending on the perceptual importance of the region in which they occur. We show that this technique produces a high correlation with subjective test data (0.93), compared to only 0.65 for PSNR. This technique is particularly useful for images coded with spatially varying quality.