Quantifying image quality in computer graphics

A crucial problem in computer graphics is validating results. It is difficult to prove with all scientific rigor that an image produced by a new algorithm is statistically significantly better than other state-of-the-art results. This project is indented to provide means of comparing computer graphics results in a possibly effective and accurate way. A major deliverable of this project is to develop the first computational image quality metric suitable for use with computer graphics applications. The metric is intended to replace tedious user studies with a computational algorithm capable of estimating quality loss due to approximated solutions. Such a metric will have a significant impact on both academic researchers and industries working in the field. It will enable validation studies to be more robust and far cheaper to carry out.

The proposed research will be directly beneficial to the imaging industry (cameras, displays, video and image processing, graphics cards), university students and the Research Institute of Visual Computing. The biggest beneficiary of this project will be the imaging industry, and indirectly consumers, through better imaging products. The imaging industry will be able to directly use the metric to design and test new products both cheaper and faster. We attach to this proposal a letter of support from Dolby, who has a strong interest in applying objective quality metrics in their video-related projects. The university students will benefit from the newly established group by taking courses that teach on quality assessment. Quality assessment is mostly missing from curricula of graphics and visualization students, but it is a key knowledge necessary to prove with scientific rigor that one image is better than the other. We plan to enrich the current portfolio of visual computing courses in Bangor to include the fundamental topics of quality assessment. This project will also strengthen the newly established Research Institute of Visual Computing (RIVIC) - http://www.rivic.org.uk, which is a collaborative network of four universities in Wales: Bangor, Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Swansea. Since quality issues are relevant for many problems that the researchers in RIVIC are dealing with, the expertise in this area will be beneficial for the entire institute.