Stereo image quality assessment using a binocular just noticeable difference model

Abstract

This paper presents a novel full-reference Stereo Image Quality Assessment (SIQA) measure based on well understood characteristics of the human visual system (HVS), namely contrast sensitivity and frequency and directional selectivity. Additionally, the proposed metric takes into account the stereo interplay between the two views, where one view may affect our perception of the overall quality of the stereo image pair. Therefore, a Binocular Just Noticeable Difference (BJND) model is used to compute the distortion visibility threshold, and the binocular suppression theory is considered in the proposed metric. The scored 3D LIVE IQA database is used to evaluate the correlation of the proposed metric with the DMOS subjective score provided by the database. The obtained experimental results show that the proposed metric correlates much better with the DMOS score than the state-of-the-art metrics do.