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A visual model for predicting chromatic banding artifacts

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Denes, Gyorgy 
Ash, George 
Fang, Huameng 
Mantiuk, Rafał K 

Abstract

Quantization of images containing low texture regions, such as sky, water or skin, can produce banding artifacts. As the bit-depth of each color channel is decreased, smooth image gradients are transformed into perceivable, wide, discrete bands. Commonly used quality metrics cannot reliably measure the visibility of such artifacts. In this paper we introduce a visual model for predicting the visibility of both luminance and chrominance banding artifacts in image gradients spanning between two arbitrary points in a color space. The model analyzes the error introduced by quantization in the Fourier space, and employs a purpose-built spatio-chromatic contrast sensitivity function to predict its visibility. The output of the model is a detection probability, which can be then used to compute the minimum bit-depth for which banding artifacts are just-noticeable. We demonstrate that the model can accurately predict the results of our psychophysical experiments.

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Keywords

Journal Title

Human Vision and Electronic Imaging

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2470-1173
2470-1173

Volume Title

2019

Publisher

Society for Imaging Science & Technology

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
European Research Council (725253)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P007902/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (1778303)