Blind image quality assessment(BIQA)is of fundamental importance in low-level computer vision community.Increasing interest has been drawn in exploiting deep neural networks for BIQA.Despite of the notable success ach...Blind image quality assessment(BIQA)is of fundamental importance in low-level computer vision community.Increasing interest has been drawn in exploiting deep neural networks for BIQA.Despite of the notable success achieved,there is a broad consensus that training deep convolutional neural networks(DCNN)heavily relies on massive annotated data.Unfortunately,BIQA is typically a small sample problem,resulting the generalization ability of BIQA severely restricted.In order to improve the accuracy and generalization ability of BIQA metrics,this work proposed a totally opinion-unaware BIQA in which no subjective annotations are involved in the training stage.Multiple full-reference image quality assessment(FR-IQA)metrics are employed to label the distorted image as a substitution of subjective quality annotation.A deep neural network(DNN)is trained to blindly predict the multiple FR-IQA score in absence of corresponding pristine image.In the end,a selfsupervised FR-IQA score aggregator implemented by adversarial auto-encoder pools the predictions of multiple FR-IQA scores into the final quality predicting score.Even though none of subjective scores are involved in the training stage,experimental results indicate that our proposed full reference induced BIQA framework is as competitive as state-of-the-art BIQA metrics.展开更多
Image quality assessment(IQA)is constantly innovating,but there are still three types of stickers that have not been resolved:the“content sticker”-limitation of training set,the“annotation sticker”-subjective inst...Image quality assessment(IQA)is constantly innovating,but there are still three types of stickers that have not been resolved:the“content sticker”-limitation of training set,the“annotation sticker”-subjective instability in opinion scores and the“distortion sticker”-disordered distortion settings.In this paper,a No-Reference Image Quality Assessment(NR IQA)approach is proposed to deal with the problems.For“content sticker”,we introduce the idea of pairwise comparison and generate a largescale ranking set to pre-train the network;For“annotation sticker”,the absolute noise-containing subjective scores are transformed into ranking comparison results,and we design an indirect unsupervised regression based on EigenValue Decomposition(EVD);For“distortion sticker”,we propose a perception-based distortion classification method,which makes the distortion types clear and refined.Experiments have proved that our NR IQA approach Experiments show that the algorithm performs well and has good generalization ability.Furthermore,the proposed perception based distortion classification method would be able to provide insights on how the visual related studies may be developed and to broaden our understanding of human visual system.展开更多
In this paper,a new approach is proposed to determine whether the content of an image is authentic or modified with a focus on detecting complex image tampering.Detecting image tampering without any prior information ...In this paper,a new approach is proposed to determine whether the content of an image is authentic or modified with a focus on detecting complex image tampering.Detecting image tampering without any prior information of the original image is a challenging problem since unknown diverse manipulations may have different characteristics and so do various formats of images.Our principle is that image processing,no matter how complex,may affect image quality,so image quality metrics can be used to distinguish tampered images.In particular,based on the alteration of image quality in modified blocks,the proposed method can locate the tampered areas.Referring to four types of effective no-reference image quality metrics,we obtain 13 features to present an image.The experimental results show that the proposed method is very promising on detecting image tampering and locating the locally tampered areas especially in realistic scenarios.展开更多
Most of Image Quality Assessment (IQA) metrics consist of two processes. In the first process, quality map of image is measured locally. In the second process, the last quality score is converted from the quality map ...Most of Image Quality Assessment (IQA) metrics consist of two processes. In the first process, quality map of image is measured locally. In the second process, the last quality score is converted from the quality map by using the pooling strategy. The first process had been made effective and significant progresses, while the second process was always done in simple ways. In the second process of the pooling strategy, the optimal perceptual pooling weights should be determined and computed according to Human Visual System (HVS). Thus, a reliable spatial pooling mathematical model based on HVS is an important issue worthy of study. In this paper, a new Visual Perceptual Pooling Strategy (VPPS) for IQA is presented based on contrast sensitivity and luminance sensitivity of HVS. Experimental results with the LIVE database show that the visual perceptual weights, obtained by the proposed pooling strategy, can effectively and significantly improve the performances of the IQA metrics with Mean Structural SIMilarity (MSSIM) or Phase Quantization Code (PQC). It is confirmed that the proposed VPPS demonstrates promising results for improving the performances of existing IQA metrics.展开更多
Based on compressive sampling transmission model, we demonstrate here a method of quality evaluation for the reconstruction images, which is promising for the transmission of unstructured signal with reduced dimension...Based on compressive sampling transmission model, we demonstrate here a method of quality evaluation for the reconstruction images, which is promising for the transmission of unstructured signal with reduced dimension. By this method, the auxiliary information of the recovery image quality is obtained as a feedback to control number of measurements from compressive sampling video stream. Therefore, the number of measurements can be easily derived at the condition of the absence of information sparsity, and the recovery image quality is effectively improved. Theoretical and experimental results show that this algorithm can estimate the quality of images effectively and is in well consistency with the traditional objective evaluation algorithm.展开更多
Traditional image quality assessment methods use the hand-crafted features to predict the image quality score,which cannot perform well in many scenes.Since deep learning promotes the development of many computer visi...Traditional image quality assessment methods use the hand-crafted features to predict the image quality score,which cannot perform well in many scenes.Since deep learning promotes the development of many computer vision tasks,many IQA methods start to utilize the deep convolutional neural networks(CNN)for IQA task.In this paper,a CNN-based multi-scale blind image quality predictor is proposed to extract more effectivity multi-scale distortion features through the pyramidal convolution,which consists of two tasks:A distortion recognition task and a quality regression task.For the first task,image distortion type is obtained by the fully connected layer.For the second task,the image quality score is predicted during the distortion recognition progress.Experimental results on three famous IQA datasets show that the proposed method has better performance than the previous traditional algorithms for quality prediction and distortion recognition.展开更多
The bandwidth of internet connections is still a bottleneck when transmitting large amounts of images,making the image quality assessment essential.Neurophysiological assessment of image quality has highlight advantag...The bandwidth of internet connections is still a bottleneck when transmitting large amounts of images,making the image quality assessment essential.Neurophysiological assessment of image quality has highlight advantages for it does not interfere with natural viewing behavior.However,in JPEG compression,the previous study is hard to tell the difference between the electroencephalogram(EEG)evoked by different quality images.In this paper,we propose an EEG analysis approach based on algebraic topology analysis,and the result shows that the difference between Euler characteristics of EEG evoked by different distortion images is striking both in the alpha and beta band.Moreover,we further discuss the relationship between the images and the EEG signals,and the results implied that the algebraic topological properties of images are consistent with that of brain perception,which is possible to give birth to braininspired image compression based on algebraic topological features.In general,an algebraic topologybased approach was proposed in this paper to analyze the perceptual characteristics of image quality,which will be beneficial to provide a reliable score for data compression in the network and improve the network transmission capacity.展开更多
The evaluation of geometric calibration accuracy of high resolution satellite images has been increasingly recognized in recent years.In order to evaluate geometric accuracy for dual-camera satellite images based on t...The evaluation of geometric calibration accuracy of high resolution satellite images has been increasingly recognized in recent years.In order to evaluate geometric accuracy for dual-camera satellite images based on the ground control points(GCP),a rigorous geometric imaging model,which was based on the collinear equation of the probe directional angle and the optimized tri-axial attitude determination(TRIAD)algorithm,is presented.Two reliable test fields in Tianjin and Jinan(China)were utilized for geometric accuracy validation of Pakistan Remote Sensing Satellite-1.The experimental results demonstrate a certain deviation of the on-orbit calibration result from the initial design values of the calibration parameters.Therefore,on-orbit geometric calibration is necessary for optical satellite imagery.Within this research,the geometrical performances including positioning accuracy without/with GCP and band registration of the dual-camera satellite were analyzed in detail,and the results of geometric image quality are assessed and discussed.As a result,it is feasible and necessary to establish such a geometric calibration model to evaluate the geometric quality of dual-camera satellite.展开更多
Purpose: Children are sometimes examined with Computed Tomography protocols designed for adults, leading to radiation doses higher than necessary. Lack of optimisation could lead to image quality higher than what is n...Purpose: Children are sometimes examined with Computed Tomography protocols designed for adults, leading to radiation doses higher than necessary. Lack of optimisation could lead to image quality higher than what is needed for diagnostic purposes with associated high doses to patients. Optimising the protocols for paediatric head trauma CT imaging will reduce radiation dose. Objective: The study aimed to optimise radiation dose and assess the image quality for a set of protocols by evaluating noise, a contrast to noise ratio, modulation transfer function and noise power spectrum. Methods: Somaton Sensation 64 was used to scan the head of an anthropomorphic phantom with a set of protocols. ImageJ software was used to analyse the paediatric head image from the scanner. IMPACTSCAN dosimeter software was used to evaluate the radiation dose to the various organs in the head. MATLAB was used to analyse the Modulation Transfer Function and the Noise Power. Results: The estimated Computed Tomography Dose Index volume (CTDI<sub>vol</sub>) increased with increasing tube current and tube voltage. The high pitch of 0.9 gave a lower dose than the 0.5 pitch. The eye lens received the highest radiation dose (39.2 mGy) whiles the thyroid received the least radiation dose (13.7 mGy). There was an increase in noise (62.46) when the H60 kernel was used and a lower noise (8.829) was noticed when the H30 kernel was used. Conclusion: The results obtained show that the H30 kernel (smooth kernel) gave higher values for noise and contrast to noise ratio (CNR) than the H60 kernel (sharp kernel). The H60 kernel produced high values for the modulation transfer function (MTF) and noise power spectrum (NPS). The eye lens received the highest radiation dose.展开更多
In order to apply the deep learning to the stereo image quality evaluation,two problems need to be solved:The first one is that we have a bit of training samples,another is how to input the dimensional image’s left v...In order to apply the deep learning to the stereo image quality evaluation,two problems need to be solved:The first one is that we have a bit of training samples,another is how to input the dimensional image’s left view or right view.In this paper,we transfer the 2D image quality evaluation model to the stereo image quality evaluation,and this method solves the first problem;use the method of principal component analysis is used to fuse the left and right views into an input image in order to solve the second problem.At the same time,the input image is preprocessed by phase congruency transformation,which further improves the performance of the algorithm.The structure of the deep convolution neural network consists of four convolution layers and three maximum pooling layers and two fully connected layers.The experimental results on LIVE3D image database show that the prediction quality score of the model is in good agreement with the subjective evaluation value.展开更多
Technological advancements continue to expand the communications industry’s potential.Images,which are an important component in strengthening communication,are widely available.Therefore,image quality assessment(IQA...Technological advancements continue to expand the communications industry’s potential.Images,which are an important component in strengthening communication,are widely available.Therefore,image quality assessment(IQA)is critical in improving content delivered to end users.Convolutional neural networks(CNNs)used in IQA face two common challenges.One issue is that these methods fail to provide the best representation of the image.The other issue is that the models have a large number of parameters,which easily leads to overfitting.To address these issues,the dense convolution network(DSC-Net),a deep learning model with fewer parameters,is proposed for no-reference image quality assessment(NR-IQA).Moreover,it is obvious that the use of multimodal data for deep learning has improved the performance of applications.As a result,multimodal dense convolution network(MDSC-Net)fuses the texture features extracted using the gray-level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM)method and spatial features extracted using DSC-Net and predicts the image quality.The performance of the proposed framework on the benchmark synthetic datasets LIVE,TID2013,and KADID-10k demonstrates that the MDSC-Net approach achieves good performance over state-of-the-art methods for the NR-IQA task.展开更多
Background Standard views in two-dimensional echocardiography are well established but the qualities of acquired images are highly dependent on operator skills and are assessed subjectively.This study was aimed at pro...Background Standard views in two-dimensional echocardiography are well established but the qualities of acquired images are highly dependent on operator skills and are assessed subjectively.This study was aimed at providing an objective assessment pipeline for echocardiogram image quality by defining a new set of domain-specific quality indicators.Consequently,image quality assessment can thus be automated to enhance clinical measurements,interpretation,and real-time optimization.Methods We developed deep neural networks for the automated assessment of echocardiographic frames that were randomly sampled from 11,262 adult patients.The private echocardiography dataset consists of 33,784 frames,previously acquired between 2010 and 2020.Unlike non-medical images where full-reference metrics can be applied for image quality,echocardiogram's data are highly heterogeneous and requires blind-reference(IQA)metrics.Therefore,deep learning approaches were used to extract the spatiotemporal features and the image's quality indicators were evaluated against the mean absolute error.Our quality indicators encapsulate both anatomical and pathological elements to provide multivariate assessment scores for anatomical visibility,clarity,depth-gain and foreshortedness.Results The model performance accuracy yielded 94.4%,96.8%,96.2%,97.4%for anatomical visibility,clarity,depth-gain and foreshortedness,respectively.The mean model error of 0.375±0.0052 with computational speed of 2.52 ms per frame(real-time performance)was achieved.Conclusion The novel approach offers new insight to the objective assessment of transthoracic echocardiogram image quality and clinical quantification in A4C and PLAX views.It also lays stronger foundations for the operator's guidance system which can leverage the learning curve for the acquisition of optimum quality images during the transthoracic examination.展开更多
This paper presents an investigation on the effect of JPEG compression on the similarity between the target image and the background,where the similarity is further used to determine the degree of clutter in the image...This paper presents an investigation on the effect of JPEG compression on the similarity between the target image and the background,where the similarity is further used to determine the degree of clutter in the image.Four new clutter metrics based on image quality assessment are introduced,among which the Haar wavelet-based perceptual similarity index,known as HaarPSI,provides the best target acquisition prediction results.It is shown that the similarity between the target and the background at the boundary between visually lossless and visually lossy compression does not change significantly compared to the case when an uncompressed image is used.In future work,through subjective tests,it is necessary to check whether this presence of compression at the threshold of just noticeable differences will affect the human target acquisition performance.Similarity values are compared with the results of subjective tests of the well-known target Search_2 database,where the degree of agreement between objective and subjective scores,measured through linear correlation,reached a value of 90%.展开更多
Noise is the most common type of image distortion affecting human visual perception.In this paper,we propose a no-reference image quality assessment(IQA)method for noisy images incorporating the features of entropy,gr...Noise is the most common type of image distortion affecting human visual perception.In this paper,we propose a no-reference image quality assessment(IQA)method for noisy images incorporating the features of entropy,gradient,and kurtosis.Specifically,image noise estimation is conducted in the discrete cosine transform domain based on skewness invariance.In the principal component analysis domain,kurtosis feature is obtained by statistically counting the significant differences between images with and without noise.In addition,both the consistency between the entropy and kurtosis features and the subjective scores are improved by combining them with the gradient coefficient.Support vector regression is applied to map all extracted features into an integrated scoring system.The proposed method is evaluated in three mainstream databases(i.e.,LIVE,TID2013,and CSIQ),and the results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method according to the Pearson linear correlation coefficient which is the most significant indicator in IQA.展开更多
Objective image quality assessment(IQA)plays an important role in various visual communication systems,which can automatically and efficiently predict the perceived quality of images.The human eye is the ultimate eval...Objective image quality assessment(IQA)plays an important role in various visual communication systems,which can automatically and efficiently predict the perceived quality of images.The human eye is the ultimate evaluator for visual experience,thus the modeling of human visual system(HVS)is a core issue for objective IQA and visual experience optimization.The traditional model based on black box fitting has low interpretability and it is difficult to guide the experience optimization effectively,while the model based on physiological simulation is hard to integrate into practical visual communication services due to its high computational complexity.For bridging the gap between signal distortion and visual experience,in this paper,we propose a novel perceptual no-reference(NR)IQA algorithm based on structural computational modeling of HVS.According to the mechanism of the human brain,we divide the visual signal processing into a low-level visual layer,a middle-level visual layer and a high-level visual layer,which conduct pixel information processing,primitive information processing and global image information processing,respectively.The natural scene statistics(NSS)based features,deep features and free-energy based features are extracted from these three layers.The support vector regression(SVR)is employed to aggregate features to the final quality prediction.Extensive experimental comparisons on three widely used benchmark IQA databases(LIVE,CSIQ and TID2013)demonstrate that our proposed metric is highly competitive with or outperforms the state-of-the-art NR IQA measures.展开更多
The traditional Range Doppler(RD)algorithm is unable to meet practical needs owing to the limit of resolution.The order of fractional Fourier Transform(FrFT)and the length of sampling signals affect SAR imaging perfor...The traditional Range Doppler(RD)algorithm is unable to meet practical needs owing to the limit of resolution.The order of fractional Fourier Transform(FrFT)and the length of sampling signals affect SAR imaging performance when FrFT is applied to RD algorithm.To overcome the above shortcomings,the purpose of this paper is to propose a high-resolution SAR image algorithm by using the optimal order of FrFT and the sample length constraints for the range direction.The expression of the optimal order of SAR range signals via FrFT is deduced in detail.The initial sample length and its constraints are proposed to obtain the best sample length of SAR range signals.Experimental results demonstrate that,when the range sampling-length changes in a certain interval,the best sampling-length will be obtained,which the best values of the range resolution,PSLR and ISLR,will be derived respectively.Compared with traditional RD algorithm,the main-lobe width of the peak-point target of the proposed algorithm is narrow in the range direction.While the peak amplitude of the first side-lobe is reduced significantly,those of other side-lobes also drop in various degrees.展开更多
Low contrast of Magnetic Resonance(MR)images limits the visibility of subtle structures and adversely affects the outcome of both subjective and automated diagnosis.State-of-the-art contrast boosting techniques intole...Low contrast of Magnetic Resonance(MR)images limits the visibility of subtle structures and adversely affects the outcome of both subjective and automated diagnosis.State-of-the-art contrast boosting techniques intolerably alter inherent features of MR images.Drastic changes in brightness features,induced by post-processing are not appreciated in medical imaging as the grey level values have certain diagnostic meanings.To overcome these issues this paper proposes an algorithm that enhance the contrast of MR images while preserving the underlying features as well.This method termed as Power-law and Logarithmic Modification-based Histogram Equalization(PLMHE)partitions the histogram of the image into two sub histograms after a power-law transformation and a log compression.After a modification intended for improving the dispersion of the sub-histograms and subsequent normalization,cumulative histograms are computed.Enhanced grey level values are computed from the resultant cumulative histograms.The performance of the PLMHE algorithm is comparedwith traditional histogram equalization based algorithms and it has been observed from the results that PLMHE can boost the image contrast without causing dynamic range compression,a significant change in mean brightness,and contrast-overshoot.展开更多
To minimize radiation risk,dose reduction is important in the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of computed tomography(CT).However,image noise degrades image quality owing to the reduced X-ray dose and a possibl...To minimize radiation risk,dose reduction is important in the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of computed tomography(CT).However,image noise degrades image quality owing to the reduced X-ray dose and a possible unacceptably reduced diagnostic performance.Deep learning approaches with convolutional neural networks(CNNs)have been proposed for natural image denoising;however,these approaches might introduce image blurring or loss of original gradients.The aim of this study was to compare the dose-dependent properties of a CNN-based denoising method for low-dose CT with those of other noise-reduction methods on unique CT noise-simulation images.To simulate a low-dose CT image,a Poisson noise distribution was introduced to normal-dose images while convoluting the CT unit-specific modulation transfer function.An abdominal CT of 100 images obtained from a public database was adopted,and simulated dose-reduction images were created from the original dose at equal 10-step dose-reduction intervals with a final dose of 1/100.These images were denoised using the denoising network structure of CNN(DnCNN)as the general CNN model and for transfer learning.To evaluate the image quality,image similarities determined by the structural similarity index(SSIM)and peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR)were calculated for the denoised images.Significantly better denoising,in terms of SSIM and PSNR,was achieved by the DnCNN than by other image denoising methods,especially at the ultra-low-dose levels used to generate the 10%and 5%dose-equivalent images.Moreover,the developed CNN model can eliminate noise and maintain image sharpness at these dose levels and improve SSIM by approximately 10%from that of the original method.In contrast,under small dose-reduction conditions,this model also led to excessive smoothing of the images.In quantitative evaluations,the CNN denoising method improved the low-dose CT and prevented over-smoothing by tailoring the CNN model.展开更多
By embedding secret data into cover images,image steganography can produce non-discriminable stego-images.The turtle shell model for data hiding is an excellent method that uses a reference matrix to make a good balan...By embedding secret data into cover images,image steganography can produce non-discriminable stego-images.The turtle shell model for data hiding is an excellent method that uses a reference matrix to make a good balance between image quality and embedding capacity.However,increasing the embedding capacity by extending the area of basic structures of the turtle shell model usually leads to severe degradation of image quality.In this research,we innovatively extend the basic structure of the turtle shell model into a three-dimensional(3D)space.Some intrinsic properties of the original turtle shell model are well preserved in the 3D version.Theoretic analysis shows that the new proposed models have good performance both in the image quality and in the complexity of the reference matrix.Our experimental results justify the theoretic conclusions.展开更多
基金supported by the Public Welfare Technology Application Research Project of Zhejiang Province,China(No.LGF21F010001)the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province,China(Grant No.2019C01002)the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province,China(Grant No.2021C03138)。
文摘Blind image quality assessment(BIQA)is of fundamental importance in low-level computer vision community.Increasing interest has been drawn in exploiting deep neural networks for BIQA.Despite of the notable success achieved,there is a broad consensus that training deep convolutional neural networks(DCNN)heavily relies on massive annotated data.Unfortunately,BIQA is typically a small sample problem,resulting the generalization ability of BIQA severely restricted.In order to improve the accuracy and generalization ability of BIQA metrics,this work proposed a totally opinion-unaware BIQA in which no subjective annotations are involved in the training stage.Multiple full-reference image quality assessment(FR-IQA)metrics are employed to label the distorted image as a substitution of subjective quality annotation.A deep neural network(DNN)is trained to blindly predict the multiple FR-IQA score in absence of corresponding pristine image.In the end,a selfsupervised FR-IQA score aggregator implemented by adversarial auto-encoder pools the predictions of multiple FR-IQA scores into the final quality predicting score.Even though none of subjective scores are involved in the training stage,experimental results indicate that our proposed full reference induced BIQA framework is as competitive as state-of-the-art BIQA metrics.
基金supported by the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China, "Research of Visual Perception for Impairments of Color Information in High-Definition Images" (No.20110018110001)
文摘Image quality assessment(IQA)is constantly innovating,but there are still three types of stickers that have not been resolved:the“content sticker”-limitation of training set,the“annotation sticker”-subjective instability in opinion scores and the“distortion sticker”-disordered distortion settings.In this paper,a No-Reference Image Quality Assessment(NR IQA)approach is proposed to deal with the problems.For“content sticker”,we introduce the idea of pairwise comparison and generate a largescale ranking set to pre-train the network;For“annotation sticker”,the absolute noise-containing subjective scores are transformed into ranking comparison results,and we design an indirect unsupervised regression based on EigenValue Decomposition(EVD);For“distortion sticker”,we propose a perception-based distortion classification method,which makes the distortion types clear and refined.Experiments have proved that our NR IQA approach Experiments show that the algorithm performs well and has good generalization ability.Furthermore,the proposed perception based distortion classification method would be able to provide insights on how the visual related studies may be developed and to broaden our understanding of human visual system.
基金Sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.60971095 and No.61172109)Artificial Intelligence Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province(Grant No.2012RZJ01)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(Grant No.DUT13RC201)
文摘In this paper,a new approach is proposed to determine whether the content of an image is authentic or modified with a focus on detecting complex image tampering.Detecting image tampering without any prior information of the original image is a challenging problem since unknown diverse manipulations may have different characteristics and so do various formats of images.Our principle is that image processing,no matter how complex,may affect image quality,so image quality metrics can be used to distinguish tampered images.In particular,based on the alteration of image quality in modified blocks,the proposed method can locate the tampered areas.Referring to four types of effective no-reference image quality metrics,we obtain 13 features to present an image.The experimental results show that the proposed method is very promising on detecting image tampering and locating the locally tampered areas especially in realistic scenarios.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60832003, 60902096, 61171163, 61071120)the Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School of Ningbo University
文摘Most of Image Quality Assessment (IQA) metrics consist of two processes. In the first process, quality map of image is measured locally. In the second process, the last quality score is converted from the quality map by using the pooling strategy. The first process had been made effective and significant progresses, while the second process was always done in simple ways. In the second process of the pooling strategy, the optimal perceptual pooling weights should be determined and computed according to Human Visual System (HVS). Thus, a reliable spatial pooling mathematical model based on HVS is an important issue worthy of study. In this paper, a new Visual Perceptual Pooling Strategy (VPPS) for IQA is presented based on contrast sensitivity and luminance sensitivity of HVS. Experimental results with the LIVE database show that the visual perceptual weights, obtained by the proposed pooling strategy, can effectively and significantly improve the performances of the IQA metrics with Mean Structural SIMilarity (MSSIM) or Phase Quantization Code (PQC). It is confirmed that the proposed VPPS demonstrates promising results for improving the performances of existing IQA metrics.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60972039)Jiangsu Province Natural Science Fund Project (BK2010077)Innovation Project of SCI & Tech for College Graduates of Jiangsu Province(CXLX12 _0475)
文摘Based on compressive sampling transmission model, we demonstrate here a method of quality evaluation for the reconstruction images, which is promising for the transmission of unstructured signal with reduced dimension. By this method, the auxiliary information of the recovery image quality is obtained as a feedback to control number of measurements from compressive sampling video stream. Therefore, the number of measurements can be easily derived at the condition of the absence of information sparsity, and the recovery image quality is effectively improved. Theoretical and experimental results show that this algorithm can estimate the quality of images effectively and is in well consistency with the traditional objective evaluation algorithm.
文摘Traditional image quality assessment methods use the hand-crafted features to predict the image quality score,which cannot perform well in many scenes.Since deep learning promotes the development of many computer vision tasks,many IQA methods start to utilize the deep convolutional neural networks(CNN)for IQA task.In this paper,a CNN-based multi-scale blind image quality predictor is proposed to extract more effectivity multi-scale distortion features through the pyramidal convolution,which consists of two tasks:A distortion recognition task and a quality regression task.For the first task,image distortion type is obtained by the fully connected layer.For the second task,the image quality score is predicted during the distortion recognition progress.Experimental results on three famous IQA datasets show that the proposed method has better performance than the previous traditional algorithms for quality prediction and distortion recognition.
基金supported by the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province(Grant No.2019C03138 and No.2019C01002)。
文摘The bandwidth of internet connections is still a bottleneck when transmitting large amounts of images,making the image quality assessment essential.Neurophysiological assessment of image quality has highlight advantages for it does not interfere with natural viewing behavior.However,in JPEG compression,the previous study is hard to tell the difference between the electroencephalogram(EEG)evoked by different quality images.In this paper,we propose an EEG analysis approach based on algebraic topology analysis,and the result shows that the difference between Euler characteristics of EEG evoked by different distortion images is striking both in the alpha and beta band.Moreover,we further discuss the relationship between the images and the EEG signals,and the results implied that the algebraic topological properties of images are consistent with that of brain perception,which is possible to give birth to braininspired image compression based on algebraic topological features.In general,an algebraic topologybased approach was proposed in this paper to analyze the perceptual characteristics of image quality,which will be beneficial to provide a reliable score for data compression in the network and improve the network transmission capacity.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.41801291)。
文摘The evaluation of geometric calibration accuracy of high resolution satellite images has been increasingly recognized in recent years.In order to evaluate geometric accuracy for dual-camera satellite images based on the ground control points(GCP),a rigorous geometric imaging model,which was based on the collinear equation of the probe directional angle and the optimized tri-axial attitude determination(TRIAD)algorithm,is presented.Two reliable test fields in Tianjin and Jinan(China)were utilized for geometric accuracy validation of Pakistan Remote Sensing Satellite-1.The experimental results demonstrate a certain deviation of the on-orbit calibration result from the initial design values of the calibration parameters.Therefore,on-orbit geometric calibration is necessary for optical satellite imagery.Within this research,the geometrical performances including positioning accuracy without/with GCP and band registration of the dual-camera satellite were analyzed in detail,and the results of geometric image quality are assessed and discussed.As a result,it is feasible and necessary to establish such a geometric calibration model to evaluate the geometric quality of dual-camera satellite.
文摘Purpose: Children are sometimes examined with Computed Tomography protocols designed for adults, leading to radiation doses higher than necessary. Lack of optimisation could lead to image quality higher than what is needed for diagnostic purposes with associated high doses to patients. Optimising the protocols for paediatric head trauma CT imaging will reduce radiation dose. Objective: The study aimed to optimise radiation dose and assess the image quality for a set of protocols by evaluating noise, a contrast to noise ratio, modulation transfer function and noise power spectrum. Methods: Somaton Sensation 64 was used to scan the head of an anthropomorphic phantom with a set of protocols. ImageJ software was used to analyse the paediatric head image from the scanner. IMPACTSCAN dosimeter software was used to evaluate the radiation dose to the various organs in the head. MATLAB was used to analyse the Modulation Transfer Function and the Noise Power. Results: The estimated Computed Tomography Dose Index volume (CTDI<sub>vol</sub>) increased with increasing tube current and tube voltage. The high pitch of 0.9 gave a lower dose than the 0.5 pitch. The eye lens received the highest radiation dose (39.2 mGy) whiles the thyroid received the least radiation dose (13.7 mGy). There was an increase in noise (62.46) when the H60 kernel was used and a lower noise (8.829) was noticed when the H30 kernel was used. Conclusion: The results obtained show that the H30 kernel (smooth kernel) gave higher values for noise and contrast to noise ratio (CNR) than the H60 kernel (sharp kernel). The H60 kernel produced high values for the modulation transfer function (MTF) and noise power spectrum (NPS). The eye lens received the highest radiation dose.
文摘In order to apply the deep learning to the stereo image quality evaluation,two problems need to be solved:The first one is that we have a bit of training samples,another is how to input the dimensional image’s left view or right view.In this paper,we transfer the 2D image quality evaluation model to the stereo image quality evaluation,and this method solves the first problem;use the method of principal component analysis is used to fuse the left and right views into an input image in order to solve the second problem.At the same time,the input image is preprocessed by phase congruency transformation,which further improves the performance of the algorithm.The structure of the deep convolution neural network consists of four convolution layers and three maximum pooling layers and two fully connected layers.The experimental results on LIVE3D image database show that the prediction quality score of the model is in good agreement with the subjective evaluation value.
文摘Technological advancements continue to expand the communications industry’s potential.Images,which are an important component in strengthening communication,are widely available.Therefore,image quality assessment(IQA)is critical in improving content delivered to end users.Convolutional neural networks(CNNs)used in IQA face two common challenges.One issue is that these methods fail to provide the best representation of the image.The other issue is that the models have a large number of parameters,which easily leads to overfitting.To address these issues,the dense convolution network(DSC-Net),a deep learning model with fewer parameters,is proposed for no-reference image quality assessment(NR-IQA).Moreover,it is obvious that the use of multimodal data for deep learning has improved the performance of applications.As a result,multimodal dense convolution network(MDSC-Net)fuses the texture features extracted using the gray-level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM)method and spatial features extracted using DSC-Net and predicts the image quality.The performance of the proposed framework on the benchmark synthetic datasets LIVE,TID2013,and KADID-10k demonstrates that the MDSC-Net approach achieves good performance over state-of-the-art methods for the NR-IQA task.
文摘Background Standard views in two-dimensional echocardiography are well established but the qualities of acquired images are highly dependent on operator skills and are assessed subjectively.This study was aimed at providing an objective assessment pipeline for echocardiogram image quality by defining a new set of domain-specific quality indicators.Consequently,image quality assessment can thus be automated to enhance clinical measurements,interpretation,and real-time optimization.Methods We developed deep neural networks for the automated assessment of echocardiographic frames that were randomly sampled from 11,262 adult patients.The private echocardiography dataset consists of 33,784 frames,previously acquired between 2010 and 2020.Unlike non-medical images where full-reference metrics can be applied for image quality,echocardiogram's data are highly heterogeneous and requires blind-reference(IQA)metrics.Therefore,deep learning approaches were used to extract the spatiotemporal features and the image's quality indicators were evaluated against the mean absolute error.Our quality indicators encapsulate both anatomical and pathological elements to provide multivariate assessment scores for anatomical visibility,clarity,depth-gain and foreshortedness.Results The model performance accuracy yielded 94.4%,96.8%,96.2%,97.4%for anatomical visibility,clarity,depth-gain and foreshortedness,respectively.The mean model error of 0.375±0.0052 with computational speed of 2.52 ms per frame(real-time performance)was achieved.Conclusion The novel approach offers new insight to the objective assessment of transthoracic echocardiogram image quality and clinical quantification in A4C and PLAX views.It also lays stronger foundations for the operator's guidance system which can leverage the learning curve for the acquisition of optimum quality images during the transthoracic examination.
文摘This paper presents an investigation on the effect of JPEG compression on the similarity between the target image and the background,where the similarity is further used to determine the degree of clutter in the image.Four new clutter metrics based on image quality assessment are introduced,among which the Haar wavelet-based perceptual similarity index,known as HaarPSI,provides the best target acquisition prediction results.It is shown that the similarity between the target and the background at the boundary between visually lossless and visually lossy compression does not change significantly compared to the case when an uncompressed image is used.In future work,through subjective tests,it is necessary to check whether this presence of compression at the threshold of just noticeable differences will affect the human target acquisition performance.Similarity values are compared with the results of subjective tests of the well-known target Search_2 database,where the degree of agreement between objective and subjective scores,measured through linear correlation,reached a value of 90%.
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61702332)the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.LZY21F030001 and LSD19H180001)。
文摘Noise is the most common type of image distortion affecting human visual perception.In this paper,we propose a no-reference image quality assessment(IQA)method for noisy images incorporating the features of entropy,gradient,and kurtosis.Specifically,image noise estimation is conducted in the discrete cosine transform domain based on skewness invariance.In the principal component analysis domain,kurtosis feature is obtained by statistically counting the significant differences between images with and without noise.In addition,both the consistency between the entropy and kurtosis features and the subjective scores are improved by combining them with the gradient coefficient.Support vector regression is applied to map all extracted features into an integrated scoring system.The proposed method is evaluated in three mainstream databases(i.e.,LIVE,TID2013,and CSIQ),and the results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method according to the Pearson linear correlation coefficient which is the most significant indicator in IQA.
基金This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.61831015 and 61901260)Key Research and Development Program of China(No.2019YFB1405902).
文摘Objective image quality assessment(IQA)plays an important role in various visual communication systems,which can automatically and efficiently predict the perceived quality of images.The human eye is the ultimate evaluator for visual experience,thus the modeling of human visual system(HVS)is a core issue for objective IQA and visual experience optimization.The traditional model based on black box fitting has low interpretability and it is difficult to guide the experience optimization effectively,while the model based on physiological simulation is hard to integrate into practical visual communication services due to its high computational complexity.For bridging the gap between signal distortion and visual experience,in this paper,we propose a novel perceptual no-reference(NR)IQA algorithm based on structural computational modeling of HVS.According to the mechanism of the human brain,we divide the visual signal processing into a low-level visual layer,a middle-level visual layer and a high-level visual layer,which conduct pixel information processing,primitive information processing and global image information processing,respectively.The natural scene statistics(NSS)based features,deep features and free-energy based features are extracted from these three layers.The support vector regression(SVR)is employed to aggregate features to the final quality prediction.Extensive experimental comparisons on three widely used benchmark IQA databases(LIVE,CSIQ and TID2013)demonstrate that our proposed metric is highly competitive with or outperforms the state-of-the-art NR IQA measures.
基金This work is supported by the 13th Five-Year Plan for Jiangsu Education Science(D/2020/01/22)JSPIGKZ and Natural Science Research Projects of Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province(19KJB510022)。
文摘The traditional Range Doppler(RD)algorithm is unable to meet practical needs owing to the limit of resolution.The order of fractional Fourier Transform(FrFT)and the length of sampling signals affect SAR imaging performance when FrFT is applied to RD algorithm.To overcome the above shortcomings,the purpose of this paper is to propose a high-resolution SAR image algorithm by using the optimal order of FrFT and the sample length constraints for the range direction.The expression of the optimal order of SAR range signals via FrFT is deduced in detail.The initial sample length and its constraints are proposed to obtain the best sample length of SAR range signals.Experimental results demonstrate that,when the range sampling-length changes in a certain interval,the best sampling-length will be obtained,which the best values of the range resolution,PSLR and ISLR,will be derived respectively.Compared with traditional RD algorithm,the main-lobe width of the peak-point target of the proposed algorithm is narrow in the range direction.While the peak amplitude of the first side-lobe is reduced significantly,those of other side-lobes also drop in various degrees.
基金This work was supported by Taif university Researchers Supporting Project Number(TURSP-2020/114),Taif University,Taif,Saudi Arabia.
文摘Low contrast of Magnetic Resonance(MR)images limits the visibility of subtle structures and adversely affects the outcome of both subjective and automated diagnosis.State-of-the-art contrast boosting techniques intolerably alter inherent features of MR images.Drastic changes in brightness features,induced by post-processing are not appreciated in medical imaging as the grey level values have certain diagnostic meanings.To overcome these issues this paper proposes an algorithm that enhance the contrast of MR images while preserving the underlying features as well.This method termed as Power-law and Logarithmic Modification-based Histogram Equalization(PLMHE)partitions the histogram of the image into two sub histograms after a power-law transformation and a log compression.After a modification intended for improving the dispersion of the sub-histograms and subsequent normalization,cumulative histograms are computed.Enhanced grey level values are computed from the resultant cumulative histograms.The performance of the PLMHE algorithm is comparedwith traditional histogram equalization based algorithms and it has been observed from the results that PLMHE can boost the image contrast without causing dynamic range compression,a significant change in mean brightness,and contrast-overshoot.
基金This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI,No.18 K15563.
文摘To minimize radiation risk,dose reduction is important in the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of computed tomography(CT).However,image noise degrades image quality owing to the reduced X-ray dose and a possible unacceptably reduced diagnostic performance.Deep learning approaches with convolutional neural networks(CNNs)have been proposed for natural image denoising;however,these approaches might introduce image blurring or loss of original gradients.The aim of this study was to compare the dose-dependent properties of a CNN-based denoising method for low-dose CT with those of other noise-reduction methods on unique CT noise-simulation images.To simulate a low-dose CT image,a Poisson noise distribution was introduced to normal-dose images while convoluting the CT unit-specific modulation transfer function.An abdominal CT of 100 images obtained from a public database was adopted,and simulated dose-reduction images were created from the original dose at equal 10-step dose-reduction intervals with a final dose of 1/100.These images were denoised using the denoising network structure of CNN(DnCNN)as the general CNN model and for transfer learning.To evaluate the image quality,image similarities determined by the structural similarity index(SSIM)and peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR)were calculated for the denoised images.Significantly better denoising,in terms of SSIM and PSNR,was achieved by the DnCNN than by other image denoising methods,especially at the ultra-low-dose levels used to generate the 10%and 5%dose-equivalent images.Moreover,the developed CNN model can eliminate noise and maintain image sharpness at these dose levels and improve SSIM by approximately 10%from that of the original method.In contrast,under small dose-reduction conditions,this model also led to excessive smoothing of the images.In quantitative evaluations,the CNN denoising method improved the low-dose CT and prevented over-smoothing by tailoring the CNN model.
文摘By embedding secret data into cover images,image steganography can produce non-discriminable stego-images.The turtle shell model for data hiding is an excellent method that uses a reference matrix to make a good balance between image quality and embedding capacity.However,increasing the embedding capacity by extending the area of basic structures of the turtle shell model usually leads to severe degradation of image quality.In this research,we innovatively extend the basic structure of the turtle shell model into a three-dimensional(3D)space.Some intrinsic properties of the original turtle shell model are well preserved in the 3D version.Theoretic analysis shows that the new proposed models have good performance both in the image quality and in the complexity of the reference matrix.Our experimental results justify the theoretic conclusions.
