Image quality assessment by expert and non-expert viewers

The difference between expert and non-expert viewers in assessing image quality is evaluated in two experiments. The assessment performance in terms of discrimination ability and reproducibility is measured for both groups. The results of these experiments suggest that both groups of viewers exhibit the same assessment behavior when judging the level of a given image quality attribute, such as e.g. sharpness. When judging overall image quality, however, expert viewers seem to weight various attributes differently as compared to non-expert viewers.