Perceptual rate distortion optimisation for video coding using free-energy principle

In this Letter, a novel perceptual rate distortion optimisation (RDO) method based on the free-energy principle is proposed. The human visual system is not sensitive to the distortion hidden in disorderly regions due to the disorderly concealment effect, i.e. the free-energy principle. Based on the human visual perception, we introduce a free-energy based just-notable-difference (FEJND) model into the RDO process to adaptively adjust the Lagrange multiplier and quantisation parameter values. Experimental results show that the proposed method conceals more distortions in disorderly regions and achieves 8.46% bit-rate reduction over the JM reference software at the same perceptual quality level.