Digital halftoning using a blue noise mask

A new digital halftoning algorithm in which the halftoning algorithm is achieved by a pixelwise comparison of the gray scale image against a non-image array, the blue noise mask, is proposed. The blue noise mask is constructed such that when thresholded at any level, the resulting binary pattern has the correct first order statistics, and also its power spectrum has blue noise (high frequency) characteristics which are visually pleasing. The construction of the blue noise mask is described and experimental results are shown. Results from a psychovisual study are provided where subjects rated halftoned images that have the same first order but different second order statistics