High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging captures a wide range of luminance existing in real-world scenes. Due to large luminance levels and higher brightness of HDR displays, artefacts can be more noticeable to the Human Visual System (HVS). In a first attempt to experimentally quantify those noticeable levels for HDR images, we pioneered in conducting an exhaustive and comprehensive Just Noticeable Difference (JND) subjective experiment of which the outcome is presented in this paper. Six distortions including JPEG, JPEG2000, noise, blur, contrast change, and quantization artefacts have been considered in the test. The distortions were applied to 10 HDR images in 100 distortion levels resulting a database of 6000 HDR test images. The subjects were asked to find the image JND location on each set of 100 images they had the freedom to explore. The effect of content features on the noticeable threshold selection is investigated per distortion type. Our results in some cases show a significant correlation between content features and JNDs. We are hoping that our results can contribute to further exploitation of a precise HVS model for HDR quality assessment and optimization of the coding and bit allocation in HDR compression.
Ahar, A, Mahmoudpour, S, Van Wallendael, G, Paridaens, T, Lambert, P & Schelkens, P 2018, A Just Noticeable Difference Subjective Test for High Dynamic Range Images. in 2018 10th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience, QoMEX 2018., 8463429, 2018 10th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience, QoMEX 2018, IEEE, pp. 1-6, 2018 Tenth International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX), Santa Margherita di Pula, Italy, 29/05/18. https://doi.org/10.1109/QoMEX.2018.8463429
Ahar, A., Mahmoudpour, S., Van Wallendael, G., Paridaens, T., Lambert, P., & Schelkens, P. (2018). A Just Noticeable Difference Subjective Test for High Dynamic Range Images. In 2018 10th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience, QoMEX 2018 (pp. 1-6). Article 8463429 (2018 10th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience, QoMEX 2018). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/QoMEX.2018.8463429
@inproceedings{7f16ef74d2df4547be0f59ebbca687f5,
title = "A Just Noticeable Difference Subjective Test for High Dynamic Range Images",
abstract = "High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging captures a wide range of luminance existing in real-world scenes. Due to large luminance levels and higher brightness of HDR displays, artefacts can be more noticeable to the Human Visual System (HVS). In a first attempt to experimentally quantify those noticeable levels for HDR images, we pioneered in conducting an exhaustive and comprehensive Just Noticeable Difference (JND) subjective experiment of which the outcome is presented in this paper. Six distortions including JPEG, JPEG2000, noise, blur, contrast change, and quantization artefacts have been considered in the test. The distortions were applied to 10 HDR images in 100 distortion levels resulting a database of 6000 HDR test images. The subjects were asked to find the image JND location on each set of 100 images they had the freedom to explore. The effect of content features on the noticeable threshold selection is investigated per distortion type. Our results in some cases show a significant correlation between content features and JNDs. We are hoping that our results can contribute to further exploitation of a precise HVS model for HDR quality assessment and optimization of the coding and bit allocation in HDR compression.",
keywords = "HDR, Subjective quality assessment, JND, QoE",
author = "Ayyoub Ahar and Saeed Mahmoudpour and {Van Wallendael}, Glenn and Tom Paridaens and Peter Lambert and Peter Schelkens",
year = "2018",
month = sep,
day = "11",
doi = "10.1109/QoMEX.2018.8463429",
language = "English",
isbn = "9781538626054",
series = "2018 10th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience, QoMEX 2018",
publisher = "IEEE",
pages = "1--6",
booktitle = "2018 10th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience, QoMEX 2018",
note = "2018 Tenth International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX), QoMEX ; Conference date: 29-05-2018 Through 01-06-2018",
url = "http://www.qomex2018.org",
}