CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT OF PERCEPTUAL IMAGE QUALITY

The study addresses whether subjects are able to assess the perceived quality of an image sequence continuously. To this end, a new method f or assessing time-varying perceptual image quality is presented by whi ch subjects continuously indicate the perceived strength of image qual ity by moving a slider along a graphical scale. The slider's position on this scale is sampled every second. In this way, temporal variation s in quality can be monitored quantitatively, and a means is provided by which differences between, for example, alternative transmission sy stems can be analyzed in an informative way. The usability of this met hod is illustrated by an experiment in which, for a period of 815 s, s ubjects assessed the quality of still pictures comprising time-varying degrees of sharpness. (C) 1995 Optical Society of America