Image quality assessment based on perceptual grouping

To further explore the human visual system（ HVS）,the perceptual grouping（ PG）, which has been proven to play an important role in the HVS, is adopted to design an effective image quality assessment（ IQA） model. Compared with the existing fixed-window-based models, the proposed one is an adaptive window-like model that introduces the perceptual grouping strategy into the IQA model. It works as follows： first,it preprocesses the images by clustering similar pixels into a group to the greatest extent; then the structural similarity is used to compute the similarity of the superpixels between reference and distorted images; finally, it integrates all the similarity of superpixels of an image to yield a quality score. Experimental results on three databases（ LIVE, IVC and MICT） showthat the proposed method yields good performance in terms of correlation with human judgments of visual quality.

Perceptual Optimization for Point-Based Point Cloud Rendering

Point-based rendering is a common method widely used in point cloud rendering.It realizes rendering by turning the points into the base geometry.The critical step in point-based rendering is to set an appropriate rendering radius for the base geometry,usually calculated using the average Euclidean distance of the N nearest neighboring points to the rendered point.This method effectively reduces the appearance of empty spaces between points in rendering.However,it also causes the problem that the rendering radius of outlier points far away from the central region of the point cloud sequence could be large,which impacts the perceptual quality.To solve the above problem,we propose an algorithm for point-based point cloud rendering through outlier detection to optimize the perceptual quality of rendering.The algorithm determines whether the detected points are outliers using a combination of local and global geometric features.For the detected outliers,the minimum radius is used for rendering.We examine the performance of the proposed method in terms of both objective quality and perceptual quality.The experimental results show that the peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR)of the point cloud sequences is improved under all geometric quantization,and the PSNR improvement ratio is more evident in dense point clouds.Specifically,the PSNR of the point cloud sequences is improved by 3.6%on average compared with the original algorithm.The proposed method significantly improves the perceptual quality of the rendered point clouds and the results of ablation studies prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

A Novel AlphaSRGAN for Underwater Image Super Resolution

Obtaining clear images of underwater scenes with descriptive details is an arduous task.Conventional imaging techniques fail to provide clear cut features and attributes that ultimately result in object recognition errors.Consequently,a need for a system that produces clear images for underwater image study has been necessitated.To overcome problems in resolution and to make better use of the Super-Resolution(SR)method,this paper introduces a novel method that has been derived from the Alpha Generative Adversarial Network(AlphaGAN)model,named Alpha Super Resolution Generative Adversarial Network(AlphaSRGAN).The model put forth in this paper helps in enhancing the quality of underwater imagery and yields images with greater resolution and more concise details.Images undergo pre-processing before they are fed into a generator network that optimizes and reforms the structure of the network while enhancing the stability of the network that acts as the generator.After the images are processed by the generator network,they are passed through an adversarial method for training models.The dataset used in this paper to learn Single Image Super Resolution(SISR)is the USR 248 dataset.Training supervision is performed by an unprejudiced function that simultaneously scrutinizes and improves the image quality.Appraisal of images is done with reference to factors like local style information,global content and color.The dataset USR 248 which has a huge collection of images has been used for the study is composed of three collections of images—high(640×480)and low(80×60,160×120,and 320×240).Paired instances of different sizes—2×,4×and 8×—are also present in the dataset.Parameters like Mean Opinion Score(MOS),Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio(PSNR),Structural Similarity(SSIM)and Underwater Image Quality Measure(UIQM)scores have been compared to validate the improved efficiency of our model when compared to existing works.

3D Audio Coding Approach Based on Spatial Perception Features

A new three-dimensional(3D) audio coding approach is presented to improve the spatial perceptual quality of 3D audio. Different from other audio coding approaches, the distance side information is also quantified, and the non-uniform perceptual quantization is proposed based on the spatial perception features of the human auditory system, which is named as concentric spheres spatial quantization(CSSQ) method. Comparison results were presented, which showed that a better distance perceptual quality of 3D audio can be enhanced by 5.7%~8.8% through extracting and coding the distance side information comparing with the directional audio coding, and the bit rate of our coding method is decreased of 8.07% comparing with the spatial squeeze surround audio coding.

A multimodal dense convolution network for blind image quality assessment

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.

Control of Perceptual Image Quality Based on PID for Streaming Video

Constant levels of perceptual quality of streaming video is what ideall usersexpect. In most cases, however, they receive time-varying levels of quality of video. In thispaper, the author proposes a new control method of perceptual quality in variable bit rate videoencoding for streaming video. The image quality calculation based on the perception of human visualsystems is presented . Quantization properties of DCT coefficients are analyzed to controleffectively. Quantization scale factors are ascertained based on the visual mask effect. AProportional Integral Difference (PID) controller is used to control the image quality. Experimentalresults show that this method improves the perceptual quality uniformity of encoded video.

Quality of experience models for network video quality

Nowadays,the service of network video is increasing explosively.But the quality of experience(QoE)model of network video quality is not stable.The video quality may be impaired by many factors.This paper proposes QoE models for network video quality.It consists of two components:1)the perceptual video quality model considering the impair factors related to video content as well as distortion caused by content and transmission.Next the model is built through a decision tree using a set of measured features form the network video.This proposed model can qualitatively give the grade of video quality and improve the accuracy of prediction.2)Based on the above model,another model is proposed to give the concrete objective score of video quality.It also considers original impair factors and predicts the video quality using fuzzy decision tree.The two models have their own advantages.The first model has a good computational complexity;the second model is more precise.All the models are simulated by actual experiments.They can improve the accuracy of objective model.The detail results are shown.