Benchmarking image codecs by assessment of coded test images: the development of test images and new objective quality metrics

Objective quality measures are required for benchmarking codec performance. Our aim was to develop a simple, accurate method capable of rapidly measuring the degree of blockiness, edge-blur and ringing due to image compression. Two test images were designed to emphasise these artefacts. The efficacy of the new metrics is demonstrated using a JPEG codec at a range of compression levels. Keywords— image quality, artefacts, subjective, objective, coding, metric, blockiness, blur, ringing.