Perceptual Image Quality Assessment for Various Viewing Conditions and Display Systems

Abstract

From complete darkness to direct sunlight, real-world displays operate in various viewing conditions often resulting in a non-optimal viewing experience. Most existing Image Quality Assessment (IQA) methods, however, assume ideal environments and displays, and thus cannot be used when viewing conditions differ from the standard. In this paper, we investigate the influence of ambient illumination level and display luminance on human perception of image quality. We conduct a psychophysical study to collect a novel dataset of over 10000 image quality preference judgments performed in illumination conditions ranging from 0 lux to 20000 lux. We also propose a perceptual IQA framework that allows most existing image quality metrics (IQM) to accurately predict image quality for a wide range of illumination conditions and display parameters. Our analysis demonstrates strong correlation between human IQA and the predictions of our proposed framework combined with multiple prominent IQMs and across a wide range of luminance values.