A well-designed visual communication channel is one which transmits the most information about a radiance field with the fewest artifacts. The role of image processing, encoding and restoration is to improve the quality of visual communication channels by minimizing the error in the transmitted data. Conventionally this role has been analyzed strictly in the digital domain neglecting the effects of image-gathering and image-display devices on the quality of the image. This results in the design of a visual communication channel which is `suboptimal.' We propose an end-to-end assessment of the imaging process which incorporates the influences of these devices in the design of the encoder and the restoration process. This assessment combines Shannon's communication theory with Wiener's restoration filter and with the critical design factors of the image gathering and display devices, thus providing the metrics needed to quantify and optimize the end-to-end performance of the visual communication channel. Results show that the design of the image-gathering device plays a significant role in determining the quality of the visual communication channel and in designing the analysis filters for subband encoding.

Date Published: 16 September 1994
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 2308, Visual Communications and Image Processing '94, (16 September 1994); doi: 10.1117/12.186031

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2308:
Visual Communications and Image Processing '94
Aggelos K. Katsaggelos, Editor(s)