An essential determinant of the value of digital images is their quality. Over the past years, there have been many attempts to develop models or metrics for image quality that incorporate elements of human visual sensitivity. However, there is no current standard and objective definition of spectral image quality. This paper proposes a reliable automatic method for objective image quality measurement by wavelet transform and Human visual system. This way the proposed measure differentiates between the random and signal-dependant distortion, which have different effects on human observer. Performance of the proposed quality measure is illustrated by examples involving images with different types of degradation. The technique provides a means to relate the quality of an image to the interpretation and quantification throughout the frequency range, in which the noise level is estimated for quality evaluation. The experimental results of using this method for image quality measurement exhibit good correlation to subjective visual quality assessments.

Date Published: 1 February 2006
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 6034, ICO20: Optical Design and Fabrication, 60341K (1 February 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.668157

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6034:
ICO20: Optical Design and Fabrication
James Breckinridge; Yongtian Wang, Editor(s)