GENERAL IMAGE-QUALITY EQUATION - GIQE

A regression-based model was developed relating aerial image quality, expressed in terms of the National Imagery Interpretability Rating Sca le (NIIRS), to fundamental image attributes. The General Image-Quality Equation (GIQE) heats three main attributes: scale, expressed as the ground-sampled distance; sharpness, measured from the system modulatio n transfer function; and the signal-to-noise ratio. The GIQE can be ap plied to any visible sensor and predicts NIIRS ratings with a standard error of 0.3 NIIRS. The image attributes treated by the GIQE are infl uenced by system design and operation parameters. The GIQE allows syst em designers and operators to perform trade-offs for the optimization of image quality. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.