Visual Quality Assessment and Blur Detection Based on the Transform of Gradient Magnitudes

abstract: Digital imaging and image processing technologies have revolutionized the way in which we capture, store, receive, view, utilize, and share images. In image-based applications, through different processing stages (e.g., acquisition, compression, and transmission), images are subjected to different types of distortions which degrade their visual quality. Image Quality Assessment (IQA) attempts to use computational models to automatically evaluate and estimate the image quality in accordance with subjective evaluations. Moreover, with the fast development of computer vision techniques, it is important in practice to extract and understand the information contained in blurred images or regions. The work in this dissertation focuses on reduced-reference visual quality assessment of images and textures, as well as perceptual-based spatially-varying blur detection. A training-free low-cost Reduced-Reference IQA (RRIQA) method is proposed. The proposed method requires a very small number of reduced-reference (RR) features. Extensive experiments performed on different benchmark databases demonstrate that the proposed RRIQA method, delivers highly competitive performance as compared with the state-of-the-art RRIQA models for both natural and texture images. In the context of texture, the effect of texture granularity on the quality of synthesized textures is studied. Moreover, two RR objective visual quality assessment methods that quantify the perceived quality of synthesized textures are proposed. Performance evaluations on two synthesized texture databases demonstrate that the proposed RR metrics outperforms full-reference (FR), no-reference (NR), and RR state-of-the-art quality metrics in predicting the perceived visual quality of the synthesized textures. Last but not least, an effective approach to address the spatially-varying blur detection problem from a single image without requiring any knowledge about the blur type, level, or camera settings is proposed. The evaluations of the proposed approach on a diverse sets of blurry images with different blur types, levels, and content demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods qualitatively and quantitatively.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201

Image Restoration by Matching Gradient Distributions

The restoration of a blurry or noisy image is commonly performed with a MAP estimator, which maximizes a posterior probability to reconstruct a clean image from a degraded image. A MAP estimator, when used with a sparse gradient image prior, reconstructs piecewise smooth images and typically removes textures that are important for visual realism. We present an alternative deconvolution method called iterative distribution reweighting (IDR) which imposes a global constraint on gradients so that a reconstructed image should have a gradient distribution similar to a reference distribution. In natural images, a reference distribution not only varies from one image to another, but also within an image depending on texture. We estimate a reference distribution directly from an input image for each texture segment. Our algorithm is able to restore rich mid-frequency textures. A large-scale user study supports the conclusion that our algorithm improves the visual realism of reconstructed images compared to those of MAP estimators

Super Resolution Imaging Needs Better Registration for Better Quality Results

In this paper, trade-off between effect of registration error and number of images used in the process of super resolution image reconstruction is studied. Super Resolution image reconstruction is three phase process, of which registration is of at most importance. Super resolution image reconstruction uses set of low resolution images to reconstruct high resolution image during registration. The study demonstrates the effects of registration error and benefit of more number of low resolution images on the quality of reconstructed image. Study reveals that the registration error degrades the reconstructed image and without better registration methodology, a better super resolution method is still not of any use. It is noticed that without further improvement in the registration technique, not much improvement can be achieved by increasing number of input low resolution images

Image Restoration

This book represents a sample of recent contributions of researchers all around the world in the field of image restoration. The book consists of 15 chapters organized in three main sections (Theory, Applications, Interdisciplinarity). Topics cover some different aspects of the theory of image restoration, but this book is also an occasion to highlight some new topics of research related to the emergence of some original imaging devices. From this arise some real challenging problems related to image reconstruction/restoration that open the way to some new fundamental scientific questions closely related with the world we interact with