A New Metric of Image Quality Assessment for Stereoscopic Content

Automatic or semi-automatic stereoscopic image quality assessment has arisen due to the recent diffusion of a new generation of stereoscopic technologies and content demand. Thereby, there is a growth in asking for algorithms of Stereoscopic Image Quality Metrics (SIQA). In this paper, we present a method for assessing the stereoscopic image quality, QUALITAS. QUALITAS is grounded on some human visual system features such as contrast sensitivity, effect of disparate image quality in left and right images, and distance perception, which do not depend on the images being tested. QUALITAS is defined in five stages. Instead of averaging individual qualities of the stereo-pair, QUALITAS introduces Contrast Band-Pass Filtering on a wavelet domain at both views, namely our algorithm perceptually weights left and right images depending on certain viewing conditions. This paper includes the comparison of 27 Metrics SIQA proposed by 16 authors, which summarizes the work made in this field in the recent five years, on image database LIVE 3D. Some algorithms can be combined with any 2D/Normal Image Quality Assessments (NIQA), giving as a result that QUALITAS was compared against 221 Metrics. QUALITAS obtained the best results in terms of overall performance of correlation coefficients. We conclude all metrics in SIQA-? are simple modifications of NIQA, which take into account some extra characteristics from the disparity map (usually depth variances). Instead QUALITAS incorporates disparity masking in addition to divide 3D scenario in two parts: background and foreground planes. Moreover QUALITAS employs a contrast band-pass filtering, so dynamic parameters are considered as observational distance. It includes loss of correlation, luminance and contrast distortion. It takes into account the visual differences between left and right images, employing a penalization depending on their wavelet energy. Thus, the novelty of QUALITAS lies in combining some the best features of stere- scopic image quality assessments.