On the Evaluation of Images Complexity: A Fuzzy Approach

The inherently multidimensional problem of evaluating the complexity of an image is of a certain relevance in both computer science and cognitive psychology. Computer scientists usually analyze spatial dimensions, to deal with automatic vision problems, such as feature-extraction. Psychologists seem more interested in the temporal dimension of complexity, to explore attentional models. Is it possible, by merging both approaches, to define an more general index of visual complexity? We have defined a fuzzy mathematical model of visual complexity, using a specific entropy function; results obtained by applying this model to pictorial images have a strong correlation with ones from an experiment with human subjects based on variation of subjective temporal estimations associated with changes in visual attentional load, which is also described herein.