No-Reference Image Quality Metric for Tone-Mapped Images

Abstract

Tone-mapping operators transform high dynamic range (HDR) images into displayable low dynamic range (LDR) images. Image quality evaluation of these LDR images is not possible by comparison with their corresponding high dynamic range images. Hence, a no-reference image quality metric for tone-mapped LDR images is proposed based on the fitting to the present psychophysical results including different visual image quality attributes. Ten images, including HDR natural scenes, were tonemapped using six TMOs. They were used in the assessment and visual attributes were determined to predict the quality of these images. The visual attributes (brightness and Naturalness) were modeled using parameters derived from CAM16-UCS. Results showed that the quality prediction of the model had a reasonable degree of accuracy.