An Image Quality Evaluation Method Based on Digital Watermarking

As a practical and novel application of watermarking, this paper presents a digital watermarking-based image quality evaluation method that can accurately estimate image quality in terms of the classical objective metrics, such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), weighted PSNR (wPSNR), and Watson just noticeable difference (JND), without the need for the original image. In this method, a watermark is embedded into the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain of the original image using a quantization method. Considering that different images have different frequency distributions, the vulnerability of the watermark for the image is adjusted using automatic control. After the auto-adjustment, the degradation of the extracted watermark can be used to estimate image quality in terms of the classical metrics with high accuracy. We calculated PSNR, wPSNR, and Watson JND quality measures for JPEG compressed images and compared the values with those estimated using the watermarking-based approach. We found that the calculated and estimated measures of quality to be highly correlated, suggesting that the proposed method can provide accurate measures of image quality under JPEG compression. Furthermore, given the similarity between JPEG and MPEG-2, this achievement has paved the road for the practical and accurate quality evaluation of MPEG-2 compressed video. We believe that this achievement is of great importance to video broadcasting

[1]  David J. Sheskin,et al.  Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical Procedures , 1997 .

[2]  Ricardo L. de Queiroz,et al.  Identification of bitmap compression history: JPEG detection and quantizer estimation , 2003, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[3]  Alan C. Bovik,et al.  41 OBJECTIVE VIDEO QUALITY ASSESSMENT , 2003 .

[4]  A. Bovik,et al.  OBJECTIVE VIDEO QUALITY ASSESSMENT , 2003 .

[5]  V. Ralph Algazi,et al.  Objective picture quality scale (PQS) for image coding , 1998, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[6]  Robert D. Nowak,et al.  An EM algorithm for wavelet-based image restoration , 2003, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[7]  Michael R. Lyu,et al.  A novel scheme for hybrid digital video watermarking: approach, evaluation and experimentation , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology.

[8]  Sha Wang,et al.  A Digital Watermarking and Perceptual Model Based Video Quality Measurement , 2005, 2005 IEEE Instrumentationand Measurement Technology Conference Proceedings.

[9]  W. J. Tam,et al.  Image quality measurement by using digital watermarking , 2003, The 2nd IEEE Internatioal Workshop on Haptic, Audio and Visual Environments and Their Applications, 2003. HAVE 2003. Proceedings..

[10]  Ingemar J. Cox,et al.  Digital Watermarking , 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[11]  Jiying Zhao,et al.  An accurate method for image quality evaluation using digital watermarking , 2005, IEICE Electron. Express.

[12]  Hans-Jurgen Zepernick,et al.  A reduced-reference perceptual quality metric for in-service image quality assessment , 2003, SympoTIC'03. Joint 1st Workshop on Mobile Future and Symposium on Trends in Communications.

[13]  Miho Ohsaki,et al.  Evaluation of edge detection methods through psychological tests-is the detected edge really desirable for humans? , 2000, Smc 2000 conference proceedings. 2000 ieee international conference on systems, man and cybernetics. 'cybernetics evolving to systems, humans, organizations, and their complex interactions' (cat. no.0.

[14]  Sanjit K. Mitra,et al.  Objective video quality metric based on data hiding , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics.

[15]  Deepa Kundur,et al.  Digital watermarking for telltale tamper proofing and authentication , 1999, Proc. IEEE.

[16]  Jerry D. Gibson,et al.  Handbook of Image and Video Processing , 2000 .

[17]  Jan Lukás,et al.  Estimation of Primary Quantization Matrix in Double Compressed JPEG Images , 2003 .

[18]  Alessandro Neri,et al.  Blind quality assessment system for multimedia communications using tracing watermarking , 2003, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[19]  Jiying Zhao,et al.  A novel semi-fragile audio watermarking scheme , 2003, The 2nd IEEE Internatioal Workshop on Haptic, Audio and Visual Environments and Their Applications, 2003. HAVE 2003. Proceedings..

[20]  Jean-Yves Chouinard,et al.  On Perceptual Quality of Watermarked Images - An Experimental Approach , 2003, IWDW.