Human Perception Measurement by Electroencephalography for Facial Image Compression

Abstract

Facial images are the main focused contents in video conferences and many other applications. Therefore, it turns to a critical issue to measure and maintain the perceptual quality of facial images if transmitted over a bandwidth-limited communication system. In this letter, we propose a regional distortion perceptual threshold measurement model based on electroencephalography (EEG) to establish the relationship between image quality and human perception. Then, a facial image compression method is presented based on the model to improve the perceptual quality. Specifically, we construct a facial image dataset with regional distortion using the better portable graphics (BPG) compression. With the dataset, we design an EEG experiment and collect the brain responses to measure the human perception on regional distortions. By this method, a regional distortion perceptual threshold map (RDPTM) is constructed to guide the data rate allocation process for different regions of facial images. The experimental results show that our method can measure the human perception of regional distortion using EEG and improve the image perceptual quality by data rate allocation based on the RDPTM.