Mh. Grim et H. Szu, Video compression quality metrics correlation with aided target recognition (ATR) applications, J ELECTR IM, 7(4), 1998, pp. 740-745
Tactical battlefield surveillance systems will require the transmission of
compressed video to utilize the limited communication bandwidth and data ca
pacity of these systems. Any compression techniques used wilt result in som
e loss of information. If is important to assess the quality of the output
video to determine its performance in aided target recognition applications
. The traditional rate of distortion formula is shown by Mallet [S. Mallet,
"Understanding wavelet image compression," Proc. SPIE Wavelet Apps. IV 307
8, 74-93 (April 1997); "A theory for multiresolution signal decomposition:
The wavelet representation," IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 11, 67
4-693 (1989)] to be inappropriate for wavelet compression in high compressi
on ratios. The reason is that the histogram changes from atl gray scale to
a concentration singularity near the origin of very low bit rate such that
the discrete approximation of the density function of the histogram is no l
onger valid. Thus we cannot theoretically predict the distortion due to wav
elet compression. Therefore we conduct an empirical investigation to evalua
te the spatial and temporal effects of lossy wavelet compression and recons
truction on tactical infrared video. We quantify localized peak signal-to-n
oise ratio and feature persistence measure measurements and objective asses
sment techniques developed by the institute for Telecommunication Sciences,
U.S. Department of commerce to assess video impairment based on quality me
asurements. We therefore measure video degradation rather than absolute vid
eo quality which is difficult to quantify. (C) 1998 SPIE and IS&T. [51017-9
909(98)00704-1].