This paper uses robust statistics and curvelet transform to learn a general-purpose no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) model. The new approach, here called M1, competes with the Curvelet Quality Assessment proposed in 2014 (Curvelet2014). The central idea is to use descriptors based on robust statistics to extract features and predict the human opinion about degraded images. To show the consistency of the method the model is tested with 3 different datasets, LIVE IQA, TID2013 and CSIQ. To test evaluation, it is used the Wilcoxon test to verify the statistical significance of results and promote an accurate comparison between new model M1 and Curvelet2014. The results show a gain when robust statistics are used as descriptor.
Examples of NR IQA work using non-parametric statistics associated with the Curvelet transform can be found in @cite_2 @cite_10 . On the other hand, in the literature review, the authors did not find any work in NR IQA that made use of robust statistical tools to extract features from the Curvelets space.
@cite_10 @cite_2
2008051965 2509123681 1991329314 1982471090
Abstract We study the efficacy of utilizing a powerful image descriptor, the curvelet transform, to learn a no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) model. A set of statistical features are extracted from a computed image curvelet representation, including the coordinates of the maxima of the log-histograms of the curvelet coefficients values, and the energy distributions of both orientation and scale in the curvelet domain. Our results indicate that these features are sensitive to the presence and severity of image distortion. Operating within a 2-stage framework of distortion classification followed by quality assessment, we train an image distortion and quality prediction engine using a support vector machine (SVM). The resulting algorithm, dubbed CurveletQA for short, was tested on the LIVE IQA database and compared to state-of-the-art NR FR IQA algorithms. We found that CurveletQA correlates well with human subjective opinions of image quality, delivering performance that is competitive with popular full-reference (FR) IQA algorithms such as SSIM, and with top-performing NR IQA models. At the same time, CurveletQA has a relatively low complexity. This paper presents a no reference image (NR) quality assessment (IQA) method based on a deep convolutional neural network (CNN). The CNN takes unpreprocessed image patches as an input and estimates the quality without employing any domain knowledge. By that, features and natural scene statistics are learnt purely data driven and combined with pooling and regression in one framework. We evaluate the network on the LIVE database and achieve a linear Pearson correlation superior to state-of-the-art NR IQA methods. We also apply the network to the image forensics task of decoder-sided quantization parameter estimation and also here achieve correlations of r = 0.989. Nowadays, Deep Neural Networks have been applied to many applications (such as classification, denoising and inpainting) and achieved impressive performance. However, most of these works pay much attention to describe how to construct the relative framework but ignore to provide a clear and intuitive understanding of why their framework performs so well. In this paper, we present a general-purpose no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) framework based on deep neural network and give insight into the operation of this network. In this NR-IQA framework, simple features are extracted by a new multiscale directional transform (shearlet transform) and the sum of subband coefficient amplitudes (SSCA) is utilized as primary features to describe the behavior of natural images and distorted images. Then, stacked autoencoders are applied as 'evolution process' to 'amplify' the primary features and make them more discriminative. Finally, by translating the NR-IQA problem into classification problem, the differences of evolved features are identified by softmax classifier. Moreover, we have also incorporated some visualization techniques to analysis and visualize this NR-IQA framework. The resulting algorithm, which we name SESANIA (ShEarlet and Stacked Autoencoders based No-reference Image quality Assessment) is tested on several database (LIVE, Multiply Distorted LIVE and TID2008) individually and combined together. Experimental results demonstrate the excellent performance of SESANIA, and we also give intuitive explanations of how it works and why it works well. In addition, SESANIA is extended to estimate quality in local regions. Further experiments demonstrate the local quality estimation ability of SESANIA on images with local distortions. A NR-IQA framework is proposed using shearlet transform and deep neural networks.Intuitive explanations of how this framework works and why it works well are given.This framework is extended to estimate image quality in local regions. We propose a natural scene statistic-based distortion-generic blind no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) model that operates in the spatial domain. The new model, dubbed blind referenceless image spatial quality evaluator (BRISQUE) does not compute distortion-specific features, such as ringing, blur, or blocking, but instead uses scene statistics of locally normalized luminance coefficients to quantify possible losses of “naturalness” in the image due to the presence of distortions, thereby leading to a holistic measure of quality. The underlying features used derive from the empirical distribution of locally normalized luminances and products of locally normalized luminances under a spatial natural scene statistic model. No transformation to another coordinate frame (DCT, wavelet, etc.) is required, distinguishing it from prior NR IQA approaches. Despite its simplicity, we are able to show that BRISQUE is statistically better than the full-reference peak signal-to-noise ratio and the structural similarity index, and is highly competitive with respect to all present-day distortion-generic NR IQA algorithms. BRISQUE has very low computational complexity, making it well suited for real time applications. BRISQUE features may be used for distortion-identification as well. To illustrate a new practical application of BRISQUE, we describe how a nonblind image denoising algorithm can be augmented with BRISQUE in order to perform blind image denoising. Results show that BRISQUE augmentation leads to performance improvements over state-of-the-art methods. A software release of BRISQUE is available online: http: live.ece.utexas.edu research quality BRISQUE_release.zip for public use and evaluation.