Machine learning-based multi-channel evaluation pooling strategy for image quality assessment

Multi-channel peculiarity is one of the most widely accepted human visual system (HVS) models for perceptual image quality assessment (IQA). Otherwise than extensive studies of channel decomposition and intra-channel distortion measure, relatively scant research effort has been devoted to develop efficient multichannel evaluation pooling strategies. In this paper, we review and address the limitations of the conventional pooling models based on HVS sensitivities-weighted average. Instead, we explore the utilization of machine learning for this pooling problem, since machine learning can establish an optimal and generalized mapping that models the highly complex relationship between the multi-channel distortion evaluations and the perceived image quality. Experiments based on available subjective IQA databases demonstrate the rationality, reliability and robustness of our proposed scheme.