The KIPS Transactions:PartB (정보처리학회논문지B)

Korea Information Processing Society (한국정보처리학회)
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Image Quality Assessment by Measuring Blocking Artifacts

블록화 현상의 측정을 통한 영상의 화질평가

  • 이상우 (홍익대학교 전자정보통신공학과) ;
  • 박상주 (홍익대학교 전자전기공학부)
  • Published : 2008.10.31
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Abstract

Block based transform coding is most popular approach for image and video compression. However it suffers from severe quality degradation especially from blocking artifacts. The subjective quality degradation caused by such blocking artifacts in general does not agree well with an objecive quality measurement such as PSNR. Hence new quality evaluation technique is necessary. We propose a new image quality assessment method by measuring blocking artifacts for block based transform coded images. In order to characterize blocking artifacts, proposed method utilizes the facts that, blocking artifacts, when occur, have different pixel values along the block boundaries and such differences usually continuously span along the whole boundaries. This method does not require the original uncompressed image. It operates on single block boundary and quantifies the amount of blocking artifacts on it. Experiments on various compressed images various bitrates show that proposed quantitative measure of blocking artifacts matches well with the subjective quality of them judged by human visual system.

블록 기반의 변환 부호화 방식은 영상 압축 표준에 널리 사용되고 있다. 이러한 방식에서 발생하는 여러 종류의 화질 열화 현상 중 블록의 경계에서 나타나는 블록화 현상은 화질을 떨어뜨리는 대표적인 요인이다. 블록화 현상에 의한 화질 열화는 기존의 PSNR 같은 화질 측정값과 부합하지 않아 새로운 평가 기법의 개발이 필요하다. 본 논문은 블록 기반 변환 부호화 방식으로 압축된 영상에서 블록화 현상이 발생한 정도를 측정하여 화질을 평가하는 새로운 기법을 제안한다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 기법은, 블록화 현상이 블록 경계에서 발생하면 경계면에서 양쪽 화소의 밝기값의 차이가 나며, 대개 그 길이가 블록의 경계 길이 만큼 이어지는 특징을 이용하여 블록화 현상을 찾아낸다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 방법은 원본 영상이 필요치 않고, 블록 경계에서 동작하며, 블록화 현상의 발생 정도를 수치화 한다. 다양한 압축 영상에 본 기법을 적용한 결과, 제안하는 블록화 현상 평가 수치는 인간의 시각 특성에 기반한 주관적 화질 평가와 부합하는 것을 확인하였다.

Keywords

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