1. A method for determining a measure of quality for a distorted image Y, characterizing a similarity between the image Y and an undistorted reference image X, having the same number of rows and columns of pixels as the image Y, the method comprising: (a1) determining a number of levels of decomposition, N, to be applied to the image X and the image Y as a function of one or more of a resolution of the image Y, a viewing distance for the image Y, and an image quality metric (IQM) applied to the image Y; (b1) applying a N level multiresolution decomposition, comprising levels 1 , 2 ,. .. i, i+1,. .. N, to the image X, producing an approximation subband containing main content of the image X and detail subbands containing edges of the image X; (c1) applying said N level multiresolution decomposition, comprising levels 1 , 2 ,. .. i, i+1,. .. N, to the image Y, producing an approximation subband containing main content of the image Y and detail subbands containing edges of the image Y; (d1) applying the IQM to the approximation subband of the image X and the approximation subband of the image Y to produce an approximation quality measure, characterizing similarity between the main content of the image X and the main content of the image Y; (e1) processing the detail subbands of the image X producing an edge map of the image X, characterizing the edges of the image X; (f1) processing the detail subbands of the image Y producing an edge map of the image Y, characterizing the edges of image Y; (g1) applying the IQM between the edge map of the image X and the edge map of the image Y to produce an edge quality measure, characterizing similarity between the edges of the image X and the edges of the image Y; and (h1) processing the approximation quality measure and the edge quality measure to determine the measure of quality.