The Image Fidelity Assessor

C.C. Taylor, J.P. Allebach, and Z. Pizlo, "The Image Fidelity Assessor," Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, February 1999.

Abstract

The IFA is a visual model that assesses perceived image fidelity. A set of contrast discrimination experiments that use stimuli matching the characteristics of receptive field profiles of simple cells in the visual cortex serve as the basis for the model. The structure of the model makes it possible to directly apply the results of the contrast discrimination experiments to the task of perceived image fidelity assessment. To evaluate the accuracy of the IFA's predictions, we propose a psychophysical validation method. The psychophysical validation method operates on complex images, retains spatial localization, and seeks to reduce the effects of response bias. Results from the psychophysical validation experiments suggest that the IFA can emulate humans in the task of image fidelity assessment for a wide range of image contents and distortion types. Full paper is available in two formats:
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