Using multiscale analysis for blind quality assessment of DIBR-synthesized images

Abstract

In this paper we propose to blindly evaluate the quality of images synthesized based on a depth image-based rendering (DIBR) procedure. As an important branch in virtual reality (VR), superior DIBR techniques provide free viewpoints in many real applications such as remote surveillance and education, but few efforts have been made to measure the performance of DIBR methods (i.e. the quality of DIBR-synthesized images), especially in the condition of reference unavailable. To this aim, we put forward a new no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) model via multiscale analysis, dubbed as MSA. The design philosophy of our proposed MSA model is that the DIBR-introduced geometry distortions damage the self-similarity characteristic of natural images and the damage degrees present regular variations at distinct scales. Through systematically incorporating the measurements of the variations provided above, our MSA model can faithfully predict the quality of images generated using different DIBR technologies. Results of experiments demonstrate that the proposed blind MSA model has delivered noticeably better performance than state-of-the-art full-and no-reference IQA methods.