Quality assessment of high-resolution images with small distortions after compression

Abstract

Image quality assessment still remains a highly relevant problem, and objective quality assessment methods are being actively developed. The methods, based on the Structural Similarity index method, have become very popular during the last decade. However, their sensitivity has been investigated using only small images and only in the cases of obvious image distortions. In this paper, we have investigated a quality assessment of high-resolution images with low distortions after compression using the Structural Similarity index method. The specific cases, related to the usage of this method for high-resolution images, are analyzed, and the problems that occur when using the method are identified. Experimental investigations have shown that image downsampling is necessary when the image quality is assessed by the Structural Similarity index method. Moreover, a sensitive algorithm suitable for the comparison of the quality of high-resolution images with small distortions is proposed and investigated in the paper.