Quality perception of specific chromatic impairments

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications 2020-07, Vol.79 (27-28), p.19831-19851
• Main Authors: Bernardo, Marco V., Pinheiro, António M. G., Fiadeiro, Paulo T., Pereira, Manuela
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Correlation coefficients; Data Structures and Information Theory; Eye movements; Image quality; Multimedia Information Systems; Perception; Quality assessment; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Tracking devices
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-020-08766-0

This work was motivated by previous studies on the perceptual influence of chromatic impairments, where was observed that specific chromatic impairments might have a different influence, related to the represented content. Hence, in this study, chromatic impairments were applied to specific color clusters and the resulting perceptual influence was analyzed. The applied chromatic impairments influence on the images naturalness was assessed using a Single Stimulus Continuous Quality Evaluation (SSCQE) and the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) was calculated. Furthermore, during the image assessment, the eye movements were registered using an eye tracking device and the Relative Fixation Time (RFT) was computed. It was concluded that the induced chromatic impairments, lead to lower MOS values than the original images, revealing a perception of quality loss. Furthermore, when nature colors are changed, subjects revealed a larger perception of the impairment, resulting in smaller MOS and producing evident changes in the RFT’s. The comparative analysis between the MOS and the RFT’s reveals high Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) results ( p = 0.79 ± 0.14).