Image quality assessment based on the visual perception of image contents

This paper describes an image quality assessment (IQA) metric based on the visual perception of image contents (VPIC)). In the metric, VPIC is firstly modelled by simulating the nonlinearity of luminance perception, masking properties and contrast sensitivity characteristics of human visual system (HVS). Then the source and distorted images are processed by this model respectively, and their intensity differences are calculated. Finally, based on the intensity differences, an IQA model is built. And 47 reference images and 1549 distorted images in the LIVE, TID2008 and CSIQ databases are tested with the IQA metric. The results show that it is helpful to improve the consistency between the objective IQA scores and the subjective mean opinion scores (MOSs) combining the visual perception and complexity of image contents.