Towards instrumental analysis of perceptual image and print quality

Abstract

Quantitative image quality analysis technologies have advanced significantly in the past twenty years. Practical instruments for objective analysis of engineering quality attributes are now used widely and successfully in the digital printing industry. However, in the design and optimization of an imaging system, measurement of engineering quality alone is not sufficient. It is equally if not more important to understand how image quality is perceived by the end user. Unfortunately, unlike engineering attributes, perceptual image quality is much more difficult to measure and quantify. Recognizing the technical challenges and the potential gain, we have initiated a study on the feasibility of instrumental analysis of perceptual image quality. Given the complexity of the problem, we submit that even incremental advances make a valuable contribution to the imaging community. In this paper, we discuss our methodology and our initial results on perceived noise, and present an assessment of the efficacy of our approach.