Natural scene statistics model independent

no-reference image quality assessment

using patch based discrete cosine transform

Imran Fareed Nizami, Mobeen ur

Rehman, Muhammad Majid & Syed
Muhammad Anwar

Multimedia Tools and Applications

An International Journal

ISSN 1380-7501

Multimed Tools Appl

DOI 10.1007/s11042-020-09229-2

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09229-2

Natural scene statistics model independent

no-reference image quality assessment using patch
based discrete cosine transform

Imran Fareed Nizami1 · Mobeen ur Rehman2 · Muhammad Majid3 ·

Syed Muhammad Anwar4

Received: 4 November 2019 / Revised: 3 June 2020 / Accepted: 15 June 2020 /

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
Most of no-reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) techniques reported in litera-
ture have utilized transform coefficients, which are modeled using curve fitting to extract
features based on natural scene statistics (NSS). The performance of NR-IQA techniques
that utilize curve-fitting suffers from degradation in performance because the distribution
of curve fitted NSS features deviate from the statistical distribution of a distorted image.
Although deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have been used for NR-IQA that
are NSS model-independent but their performance is dependent upon the size of training
data. The available datasets for NR-IQA are small, therefore data augmentation is used that
affects the performance of DCNN based NR-IQA techniques and is also computationally
expensive. This work proposes a new patch-based NR-IQA technique, which utilizes fea-
tures extracted from discrete cosine transform coefficients. The proposed technique is curve
fitting independent and helps in avoiding errors in the statistical distribution of NSS fea-
tures. It relies on global statistics to estimate image quality based on local patches, which
allow us to decompose the statistics of images. The proposed technique divides the image
into patches and extracts nine handcrafted features i.e., entropy, mean, variance, skewness,
kurtosis, mobility, band power, energy, complexity, and peak to peak value. The extracted
features are used with a support vector regression model to predict the image quality score.
The experimental results have shown that the proposed technique is database and image
content-independent. It shows better performance over a majority of distortion types and on
images taken in real-time.

Keywords No-reference image quality assessment · Discrete cosine transform ·

Natural scene statistics · Curve fitting · Support vector regression

 Imran Fareed Nizami

imnizami.buic@bahria.edu.pk

Extended author information available on the last page of the article.

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1 Introduction

Digital images have become an essential part of our daily life with an increasing amount
of usage, which is motivated by the acquisition and sharing of images on a wide range
of gadgets and applications [10]. Many imaging applications require maintaining the qual-
ity of experience for end-users, where image quality assessment (IQA) plays a vital role
[1, 4, 26]. Image Quality Assessment can help in assessing the quality of saliency mod-
els, watermarked and decrypted images, and data hiding in images [2, 2, 16, 16, 24, 25,
58, 59, 59, 60]. Distortions are introduced in images due to the limitations in communica-
tion technology and image acquisition systems, which degrade the quality of images. IQA
is generally classified into full-reference (FR-IQA), reduced-reference (RR-IQA), and no-
reference (NR-IQA) depending on the usage of reference images. In FR-IQA, information
regarding the whole reference image is required to perform IQA. In RR-IQA, only partial
information regarding the reference image is required. In contrast, NR-IQA techniques do
not require any information regarding the reference image. The requirement of whole or
partial information regarding the reference image makes FR-IQA and RR-IQA techniques
cumbersome to use. NR-IQA techniques are suitable for real-time scenarios, since reference
images are less likely to be available in such instances [38].
Various NR-IQA techniques have been proposed in literature based on natural scene
statistics (NSS), which extract features in different transform domains to assess the quality
of images [12, 13, 17–19, 28, 30, 40–43, 45, 46, 49, 51, 53, 55, 58, 60, 61, 65]. These tech-
niques perform IQA by curve fitting to a NSS model and assess the deviation between the
statistical properties of distorted and pristine images. A higher deviation indicates a lower
image quality and a lower deviation represents a higher image quality. Blind image quality
index (BIQI) uses the wavelet transform to decompose an image over three scales and ori-
entations [36]. The wavelet coefficients are subjected to curve fitting using a generalized
Gaussian distribution (GGD) model to extract 18 features based on mean, variance, and
shape parameters. These features are then used with a pre-trained support vector regression
(SVR) model for predicting the image quality score. Distortion identification-based image
verity and integrity evaluation (DIIVINE) has extended BIQI to extract features for NR-IQA
using wavelet transform over two scales and six orientations [37]. Gaussian scale mixture
model and GGD are used to perform curve fitting and extract five groups of features i.e.,
across orientation statistics, spatial correlation, correlation across scales, orientation selec-
tive statistics and scale, and orientation selective statistics. A set of 88 features is extracted
using these five groups, which are given as an input to a pre-trained SVR model for assessing
the quality of an image.
Firstly, Nill et al. observed that there is a correlation between the human visual sys-
tem and the characteristics of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) [39]. A Multiplicative
weighting factor was used, with a HVS model along with a subimage weighting factor to
IQA. BLIINDS-I uses DCT to extract NSS based features that represent image informa-
tion such as image structure, contrast, image sharpness, orientation anisotropies, to extract
four features at two scales i.e., the average of the lowest 1% of the DCT coefficients kur-
tosis, the average of the local DCT contrast values, the DCT coefficient entropy variance
across four orientations and the maximum DCT coefficient entropy across four orienta-
tions, these form a feature vector of length 8 [47]. Blind image integrity notator using DCT
statistics (BLIINDS-II) decomposes an image using DCT over three scales. Curve fitting
is performed using GGD and histograms of DCT coefficients to extract 18 features. Four
groups of features are considered including orientation model features, energy subband ratio
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measure, coefficient of frequency variation, and generalized Gaussian model shape parameters
[48]. The extracted features are used with a Bayesian inference model to assess the quality of an
image. In [62], an unsupervised feature learning framework is introduced without any prior
knowledge regarding the pristine version of the image and the distortion affecting the image.
The method follows a four-step approach that extracts local features using raw patches, then
constructs a codebook by encoding local features. Finally feature pooling is performed to
extract the feature vector which is used with a regression model to predict the image quality.
In [63], NR-IQA is performed using no-reference joint generalized local binary pat-
tern (NRGLBP) statistics, where the Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) technique is used to
decompose an image into four subbands. Features are extracted by curve fitting the joint
generalized local binary pattern of these subbands using histograms to extract 72 features. A
pre-trained SVR model is used for the prediction of image quality score. The no-reference
free energy-based robust metric (NFERM) method used GGD and linear autoregressive
model for curve fitting to extract three groups of features i.e., using free energy principle,
structural degradation, gradient magnitude, and loss of naturalness [9]. These features are
combined to construct a feature vector having a length of 23 and given as an input to a SVR
model to predict the quality score of images.
Blind/referenceless image spatial quality evaluator (BRISQUE) extracts features in the
spatial domain to assess the quality of an image using normalized luminance coefficients
[34]. Curve fitting using GGD is performed over the mean subtracted contrast normalized
coefficients to form a feature vector of length 36, which is used with a pre-trained SVR for
assessing the image quality. Natural Image Quality Evaluator (NIQE) method uses features
similar to those used in BRISQUE and a distance measure to compute the image quality
score [35]. In [57], histograms of gradient magnitude (GM) and LoG are used in a joint
adaptive normalization model to extract 40 features. The extracted features are used in a
pre-trained SVR model to predict the image quality score. In [29], the free energy principle
is used to approximate the internal generative model using sparse representation. Linear
autoregression model is used for curve fitting. The quality score is computed by taking the
difference between the entropy of reference and distorted images. In [15], a bag-of-words
approach is used to construct a dictionary for NR-IQA. The bag-of-words approach uses
histogram of visual words for curve fitting of extracted features. The extracted features
are given as an input to a pre-trained regression model for computing the image quality.
In [33],the pseudo-reference image-based technique is used to perform IQA by estimating
blockiness, sharpness, and noisiness content in an image. Curve fitting is performed on
these three parameters using a logistic function to extract features. The extracted features
are given as an input to a pre-trained SVR model to predict the image quality.
An improved NSS model for NR-IQA is proposed in [64] and consider errors due to
curve fitting of statistical features to GGD. The technique works under the assumption that
a change in image statistics and structural regularities caused by distortions cannot be com-
pletely characterized by fitting the parameters of the NSS model. Therefore, the distribution
of the statistical features of a distorted image may not follow a certain NSS model. The dis-
tribution of statistical features obtained from distorted images and curve fitted one’s under
a certain NSS model may be different. It has been shown that the scale and shape parame-
ters for fitting statistical properties to GGD contain errors, which degrade the performance
of NR-IQA techniques and fitting errors are considered to improve the prediction capacity
of NR-IQA techniques. The improved NSS technique uses three groups of features namely
fitting parameters of GGD and asymmetric generalized Gaussian distribution (AGGD) mod-
els, fitting errors of AGGD and GGD models, and likelihood of probability fitting error on
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NSS distribution. A total of 50 features are extracted for quality score assessment of images
using a pre-trained SVR model. Support vector machines (SVM) have been used in a variety
of applications before convolutional neural networks [1].
Recently, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have been used for NR-IQA that
are data-driven and do not use handcrafted features. Since, the size of databases available
for IQA is limited, most of the DCNN based IQA techniques utilize transfer learning to
train the DCNN. In [31], a local normalized multi-scale difference of Gaussian of images is
used as input to DCNN to predict the quality score of the image. The DCNN is constructed
using a three-layer stacked auto-encoder network. The output of the auto-encoder is used
with a SVR for predicting the image quality score. An end to end DCNN is introduced in
[3], which consists of ten convolutional and five pooling layers and two fully connected
layers for regression purposes. The technique is data-driven, where the DCNN uses joint
learning of local quality and local weights relative to the global quality and global weights
for assessment of image quality. A patch-based approach using DCNN is introduced in
[20]. A local quality map is generated, which is utilized in conjunction with automatically
extracted features using DCNN. The DCNN consists of two convolutional layers followed
by four fully connected layers. Local quality maps on each patch are obtained, which are
used to generate a local quality metric score. Pooling is applied to local quality metric scores
to compute the overall image quality score.
Deep neural networks have evolved to such an extent that it seems they are capable of
handling any research problem of computer vision, but their performance is dependent upon
the size of training data. DCNN requires large training data for tuning its parameters. The
available datasets for NR-IQA are small in size when compared to the ones on which usu-
ally DCNN are trained. The largest dataset available for NR-IQA is Kadid10-k [27], which
contains a few thousand annotated images. Training DCNN on these images can lead the
network to overfitting problem. For the expansion of the dataset, researchers have adopted
data augmentation techniques on NR-IQA datasets and have proposed different algorithms
[6]. But data augmentation process affects the predicted perceptual quality scores, which
may lead to a decline in system performance. Most NR-IQA techniques attempt to transfer
generalized image feature illustration from a pre-trained network on big datasets like Ima-
geNet to predict the quality score [7, 23] but, lesser association and correspondence among
NR-IQA and image classification affects the efficiency of transfer learning. Furthermore,
NR-IQA techniques based on DCNNs are usually computationally expensive as compared
to techniques that extract handcrafted features.
Although DCNN based NR-IQA techniques are NSS independent but due to the
above-mentioned reasons DCNN has not been used in this work. Different transformation
techniques and different statistical-based methods have depicted impressive results in field
of computer vision [24, 25] . This work proposes a new NR-IQA technique utilizing features
extracted from DCT coefficients of an image without using NSS models or curve fitting.
The image is divided into R patches of size N × N . The NSS features are averaged for the
patches to obtain a feature vector of length 9. The extracted features are used with a SVR
model for prediction of quality score. The proposed technique relies on global statistics to
estimate image quality based on local patches, which allow us to decompose the statistics
of the image using nine features. The major contributions of this paper are,
– DCT based features are extracted, which resemble features for images with similar
mean observer score (MOS) values irrespective of distortion type and image content.
– The proposed technique does not require curve fitting and hence, avoids errors in
representing the statistical distribution of NSS properties.
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– The proposed technique is simple to implement and the predicted quality score shows
high correlation with the MOS.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the proposed
methodology for extracting statistical features from DCT coefficients for NR-IQA. Evalua-
tion criteria and experimental results are presented on subjective IQA databases in Section 3
followed by a conclusion in Section 4.

2 Proposed methodology

The proposed technique is shown in Fig. 1. Firstly, an input image I (i, j ) is divided into R
number of subregions called patches P (i, j ) of size N × N . A DCT is performed on each
patch and nine statistical features Fss are computed using DCT coefficients A(u, v). The
feature values are averaged over all patches under the assumption that all patches contribute
equally towards IQA, such that each statistical feature has a single value for each image. The
extracted features are given as an input to SVR model for the prediction of image quality
score. Each of these steps is explained in detail in the following text.

2.1 Discrete cosine transform (DCT)

The image patches are transformed from spatial domain to frequency domain using DCT,
which is computed for an image patch P as,
 N−1
N−1     
(2j + 1)(2i + 1)π (2i + 1)(2v + 1)π
a(u, v) = P (i, j )cos cos , (1)
4N 4M
i=0 j =0

where u, v are the frequency domain coordinates, i, j are the spatial coordinates, N × N
represents the size of a patch. Zero padding is performed if an image is not completely
divided into patches of size of N × N .

2.2 Patch based feature extraction and feature vector formulation

The ultimate goal of NR-IQA is to predict the quality score of an image using objective
parameters without the requirement of a reference image. The proposed technique extract
features using DCT coefficients without using curve fitting. The details of extracted features
are given below.

1.Entropy
2.Mean
3.Variance
4.Skewness
I(i,j) Division of P(i,j) Discrete Fss Support Predicted
a(u,v) 5.Kurtosis
Image into Cosine Vector Quality
Patches Transform 6.Mobility Regression Score
7.Band Power
Input Images 8.Complexity
9.Peak 2 Peak

Feature Extraction

Fig. 1 Block diagram of the proposed model independent NR-IQA using patch based DCT
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2.2.1 Entropy (H )

Entropy represents the information regarding randomness in the image, which is given as,

M−1
H =− p(r)log2 (p(r)), (2)
r=0

where p represents the probability associated with the rth bin of the image and M − 1
represents maximum intensity value that a pixel can have in the image.

2.2.2 Mean (μ)

Mean is the first central moment of the probability distribution and is given as,
N−1 N−1 2
i=0 j =0 (a(i, j ))
μ= , (3)
N ×N
where a is the set of coefficients extracted after applying DCT over an image patch.

2.2.3 Variance (σ 2 )

Variance is the second central moment of the probability distribution. Variance shows the
spread of distribution on either side of the mean value and is given as,
N−1 N−1
j =0 (a(i, j ) − μ)
2
i=0
σ =
2
. (4)
N ×N

2.2.4 Skewness (Sk )

Skewness represents the third central moment of the probability distribution and measures
the symmetry of a distribution. A negatively skewed histogram suggests that the image
contains pixels with low-intensity values. A positively skewed histogram suggests that
the image consists of pixels with high-intensity values. A histogram with zero skewness
suggests a normal distribution. Skewness is given as,
E[a − μ]3
Sk = , (5)
σ3
where E[·] represents the expected value operator, which is given as,
∞

E[X] = xi pi , (6)
i=1

where X is a random variable with countableoutcomes x1 , x2 ,..., which occur with

probabilities p1 , p2 ,..., such that the infinite sum ∞
i=1 |xi |pi converges.

2.2.5 Kurtosis (K )

Kurtosis carries information regarding the fourth central moment of a probability distribu-
tion and is given as,
E(a − μ)4
K= , (7)
σ4
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The kurtosis value signifies certain properties of a distribution, which are given as,
⎧
⎨ 3, Distribution a is normal.
K = > 3, Distribution a is more outlier-prone. (8)
⎩
< 3, Distribution a is lesser outlier-prone.

2.2.6 Mobility (MB )

Mobility is the mean frequency of the variance power spectrum and is given as,

(σ 2 ( d(a)
dt ))
MB = , (9)
σ 2 (a)
d
where dt represents the derivative function.

2.2.7 Band power (BP )

Band power represents the measure of power under a range of particular frequency band in
an image and is calculated as,
N−1 N−1
i=0 j =0 (a(i, j ))2
BP = . (10)
N ×N
Those coefficient values of a are used for computation of BP , which lie within the frequency
range FR given by,
⎧
⎪
⎪ 0 ∼ F s/2, if a is real and N is even,
⎨
0 ∼ F s(N − 1)/(2N ), if a is real and N is odd,
FR =
⎪
⎪ −F s(N − 2)/(2N ) ∼ F s/2, if a is complex and N is even,
⎩
−F s(N − 1)/(2N ) ∼ F s ∗ (N − 1)/(2 ∗ N ) if a is complex and N is odd
(11)
where F s is the sampling frequency.

2.2.8 Complexity (Cm )

The complexity feature is used to observe the change in various frequency levels. It mea-
sures the similarity between coefficients and converges to 1, if the similarity index is high.
Complexity is given as,

(MB ( d(a)
dt ))
Cm = . (12)
MB (a)

2.2.9 Peak to peak (P 2P )

Peak to peak is used to represent the maximum valued DCT coefficient in each image patch
and is given as,
P 2P = Max(a), (13)

where Max(·) represents the maximum operator.

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Once the set of nine features is computed over R number of patches, the final feature
vector is formed by averaging values of a particular feature over all the patches and is given
as,
R
fp =1 Fval (i, fp )
FSS (i) = , (14)
R
where Fval represents the value of a particular feature over one patch, i = {1, 2..., 9} and
fp represents the patch number i.e., fp = {1, 2, ..., R} and FSS (i) represents the value for
the ith feature over the whole image.

2.3 SVM regression model

After features are extracted, the prediction of image quality score is performed by SVR
using LibSVM package [5]. A SVR model for prediction of image quality is given as,
γ (h) = ζ ξ(h) + c1 , (15)
where h represents the extracted features and the feature space is represented using ξ , c1
is a constant value, and the weight of ith instance is represented by ζ . The objective is to
minimize the error between ξ(·) and the target value by approximating a SVR function. A
kernel function w(·) is used to perform computations for approximating a SVR model. The
inner product can be computed without constructing the vector space by using the kernel
function. A kernel-based on the radial function having an order G is given as [52],
 
1 ||x − ci ||
w(x) = Σi=1 αi
J
exp − + b2 , (16)
G
(2π ) 2 σ G 2σi2
i
where the center of the ith Gaussian basis function is given by ci , σi represents the standard
deviation, the weight of ith Gaussian basis function is given by αi and the bias value is
represented by b2 .

3 Experimental results

The prediction of image quality score using SVR requires training and testing. Therefore,
the images in the IQA databases are divided into two non-overlapping and content inde-
pendent sets, such that those images present in the training set are not present the in testing
set and vice versa. 80% of the images are used for testing, whereas 20% of the images
are used for training. To negate the effect of biasing during the selection of training and
testing images, the evaluation parameters are computed over 1000 iterations, where the non-
overlapping sets of training and testing images are selected randomly. Median values of the
evaluation parameters over 1000 runs are reported for performance comparison. The c and
γ values for SVR are selected to be 1000 and 0.1 respectively in this work for all databases.

3.1 IQA databases and evaluation parameters

The proposed NR-IQA technique is evaluated over four IQA databases i.e., LIVE [50],
TID2013 [44], CSIQ [21] and CLIVE [8]. LIVE database consists of 29 reference images
that are distorted using five types of distortions i.e., fast fading (FF), white noise (WN),
Gaussian blur (GB), JPEG2000 compression (JP2KC), JPEG compression (JPEG). The dif-
ference mean observer scores of 779 images are provided in LIVE. The TID2013 database
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contains a total of 3000 images. A total of 25 pristine images are distorted over 5 vary-
ing levels of distortion of 24 distortion types. MOS of all the images are provided in the
database. CSIQ database consists of six distortion types i.e., GB, JP2KC, JPEG, WN, global
contrast (GC), and pink noise (PN), which are used to distort 30 reference images. DMOS
scores for 866 images are provided. The CLIVE database constitutes a total of 1162 images,
which are taken in real-time conditions using various mobile device cameras in day and
nighttime conditions.
Pearson correlation constant (PCC), Spearman rank-ordered correlation coefficient
(SRC), and root mean squared error (RMSE) are usually utilized to assess the performance
of IQA techniques. SRC and PCC measures the correlation between MOS and predicted
image quality score and a value close to unity signifies a better performance. RMSE mea-
sures the deviation of predicted quality score from the MOS. A superior performance for
RMSE is shown by a value near to zero.

3.2 Performance analysis

In the proposed technique, the patch size is varied between 2 × 2 to 25 × 25. The best
performance is achieved with a patch size of 8 × 8. The performance decreases, when the
patch size is increased or decreased from 8 × 8. The SRC scores, when the patch sizes are
varied for LIVE, TID2013 and, CSIQ databases is shown in Fig. 2. It is observed that the
SRC score decreases monotonically as the patch size is varied from the select patch size.
All results presented in the rest of the paper are based on a patch size of 8 × 8.
The normalized histograms of feature values for images affected by different distortion
types and difference mean observer scores (DMOS) ranging between low, medium, and
high respectively are shown in Fig. 3. The DMOS value of each image is computed by
taking the mean of subjective evaluations performed by a total of 175 observers. The DMOS
score is computed by taking the difference between the MOS score of pristine images and
distorted images. It is observed that extracted features show similar distribution for images
with similar DMOS scores. It is also observed that the distribution of extracted features
change with DMOS scores i.e., the distribution of extracted features for images with low
DMOS scores is different from the distribution of extracted features with medium or high
DMOS scores and vice versa. Furthermore, the extracted features show similar distribution
for different images with similar DMOS scores i.e., images with different image content but,
similar image quality has the same distribution for the extracted features. It is also seen that
the same images affected by different distortion types having similar DMOS scores show
similar distribution for the extracted features. Therefore, the extracted features help predict
the image quality score without curve fitting.
A performance comparison of the proposed technique with sixteen state-of-the-art NR-
IQA techniques over individual distortion types is shown in Table 1, where the hit count

1 1 1
SRC score

SRC score

SRC score

0.5 0.5 0.5

0 0 0
5 10 15 20 25 5 10 15 20 25 5 10 15 20 25
Patch Size (NxN) Patch Size (NxN) Patch Size (NxN)
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 2 SRC score for varying patch size on different databases a LIVE, b TID2013 and c CSIQ
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Fig. 3 Normalized distribution of extracted features for different distortion types a images with low DMOS
scores (high quality) b images with medium DMOS scores less than 50 (medium quality) c images with
medium DMOS scores greater than 50 (medium quality) d images with high DMOS scores (low quality)

and boldface values show the number of times an NR-IQA technique performs best. It is
observed that the proposed technique is ranked at the top, with a hit count of 13, which is
higher than the best hit count of 11 for SSIM, which is a FR-IQA technique, and a hit count
of 6 for VRPON, which is a DCNN based NR-IQA techniques. The proposed technique
performs best for 1 out of 5, 9 out of 24, and 3 out of 4 distortion types on the LIVE,
TID2013, and CSIQ databases, respectively.
Table 1 Median SRC scores for performance comparison of the proposed technique over individual distortion using LIVE, TID2013 and CSIQ databases

IQA Distort- PSNR SSIM BIQI BLIINDS- BRISQUE DIIVINE NSS M3 Pseudo FSI- MSDD CORNIA SESANIA MEON VRPON HFD- Pro-
data- tion [14] [54] [36] II [48] [34] [37] [64] [57] [33] RR [15] [62] [22] [32] [11] BIQA posed
base type [29] [56]

LIVE JP2K 0.8954 0.9460 0.7849 0.9258 0.9175 0.8148 0.9300 0.9283 0.9069 0.9023 0.9328 0.9271 0.8862 – 0.9790 0.9500 0.9821
[50] JPEG 0.8809 0.9390 0.8801 0.9500 0.9655 0.8926 0.9310 0.9659 0.9699 0.9623 0.9311 0.9437 0.9293 – 0.9690 0.9710 0.9314
WN 0.9854 0.9640 0.9157 0.9477 0.9789 0.9617 0.9820 0.9853 0.9854 0.9231 0.9572 0.9608 0.9309 – 0.9920 0.9790 0.9874
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GB 0.7823 0.9070 0.8367 0.9132 0.9479 0.8792 0.9560 0.9395 0.9243 0.9642 0.9485 0.9553 0.9410 – 0.9420 0.9261
FF 0.8907 0.9410 0.7023 0.8736 0.8854 0.8202 0.9080 0.9008 0.8912 0.8861 0.8922 0.9103 0.8807 – 0.9550 0.9310 0.9379
TID2013 #1 – 0.8670 0.3408 0.7142 0.7060 0.6300 0.8590 0.7480 0.9181 0.7086 0.6519 0.5500 – 0.8130 0.8330 – 0.9231
[44] #2 – 0.7730 0.1962 0.7282 0.5230 0.4235 0.6250 0.5910 0.8587 0.7251 0.4870 0.2090 – 0.7220 0.7350 – 0.8610
#3 – 0.8520 0.6892 0.8245 0.7760 0.7265 0.7820 0.7690 0.5293 0.7034 0.7885 0.7170 – 0.9260 0.9010 – 0.9300
#4 – 0.7770 0.1835 0.3577 0.2950 0.3210 0.3677 0.4910 0.7479 0.7210 0.3718 0.3600 – 0.7280 0.5610 – 0.8309
#5 – 0.8630 0.6071 0.8523 0.8360 0.7754 0.9046 0.8750 0.9263 0.7710 0.7772 0.7970 – 0.9110 0.8840 – 0.9402
#6 – 0.7500 0.0138 0.6641 0.8020 0.6692 0.7746 0.6930 0.4585 0.7040 0.6855 0.5850 – 0.9010 0.9130 – 0.8977
#7 – 0.8660 0.6731 0.7799 0.6820 0.5915 0.8101 0.8330 0.4898 0.2618 0.8023 0.7270 – 0.8880 0.8830 – 0.8342
#8 – 0.9670 0.8957 0.8523 0.8610 0.8446 0.8924 0.8780 0.8593 0.9501 0.9022 0.8400 – 0.8870 0.9180 – 0.9277
#9 – 0.9250 0.7866 0.7538 0.5000 0.5533 0.8702 0.7210 0.4210 0.8312 0.8236 0.7210 – 0.7970 0.8320 – 0.8422
Author's personal copy

#10 – 0.9200 0.7854 0.8077 0.7900 0.7417 0.8931 0.8230 0.9107 0.8576 0.8446 0.8060 – 0.8500 0.8910 – 0.9031
#11 – 0.9470 0.8831 0.8615 0.7790 0.7988 0.9323 0.8720 0.8680 0.9060 0.9207 0.8000 – 0.8910 0.9220 – 0.9162
#12 – 0.8450 0.5515 0.2512 0.2540 0.3012 0.7472 0.4000 0.7887 0.3632 0.6059 0.5950 – 0.7460 0.7110 – 0.6800
#13 – 0.8830 0.5469 0.7550 0.7230 0.6715 0.7012 0.7310 0.4883 0.6358 0.6431 0.6540 – 0.7160 0.8000 – 0.6823
#14 – 0.7820 0.1605 0.0812 0.2130 0.1751 0.1989 0.1900 0.0086 0.4455 0.2074 0.1570 – 0.1160 0.6070 – 0.1869
#15 – 0.5720 0.0962 0.3713 0.1970 0.1835 0.3273 0.3180 0.2333 0.5591 0.1452 0.0160 – 0.5000 0.5200 – 0.6528
#16 – 0.7750 0.0077 0.1585 0.2170 0.1545 0.2327 0.1190 0.1106 0.6198 0.2086 0.1770 – 0.1770 0.3600 – 0.0900
#17 – 0.3780 0.4233 0.0823 0.0790 0.1246 0.2938 0.2240 0.1846 0.5683 0.4235 0.2620 – 0.2520 0.4730 – 0.7699
#18 – 0.4140 0.0554 0.1092 0.1130 0.0315 0.1185 –0.1210 0.3786 0.2615 0.1209 0.1700 – 0.6840 0.6930 – 0.4546
Table 1 (continued)

IQA Distort- PSNR SSIM BIQI BLIINDS- BRISQUE DIIVINE NSS M3 Pseudo FSI- MSDD CORNIA SESANIA MEON VRPON HFD- Pro-
data- tion [14] [54] [36] II [48] [34] [37] [64] [57] [33] RR [15] [62] [22] [32] [11] BIQA posed
base type [29] [56]

#19 – 0.7800 0.2593 0.6987 0.6740 0.5596 0.7819 0.7010 0.8612 0.6373 0.3864 0.4070 – 0.8900 0.8490 – 0.8969
#20 – 0.8570 0.6064 0.2223 0.1980 0.2823 0.5315 0.2020 0.0691 0.5287 0.6237 0.5410 – 0.4060 0.5430 – 0.4258
#21 – 0.8060 0.5546 0.4505 0.6270 0.6803 0.8354 0.6640 0.5977 0.3605 0.6018 0.6960 – 0.7720 0.8360 – 0.7662
#22 – 0.8540 0.5919 0.8146 0.8490 0.8038 0.8554 0.8860 0.6753 0.7614 0.6775 0.6490 – 0.8570 0.7990 – 0.8677
#23 – 0.8780 0.7592 0.5676 0.7240 0.7145 0.8014 0.6480 0.7253 0.7511 0.7810 0.6890 – 0.7790 0.7930 – 0.8969
#24 – 0.9460 0.9023 0.8562 0.8110 0.7995 0.9052 0.9150 0.7873 0.8815 0.9045 0.8740 – 0.8550 0.8610 – 0.9196

CSIQ WN 0.9363 0.8974 0.6000 0.8863 0.9310 0.8131 0.8810 0.9406 0.9476 0.8490 0.8857 0.7980 – 0.9470 – – 0.9611
[21] GB 0.9291 0.9609 0.8160 0.9152 0.9143 0.8756 0.8880 0.9070 0.9161 0.9634 0.9237 0.9006 – 0.8270 – – 0.9651
Author's personal copy

JPEG 0.8881 0.9546 0.8384 0.9115 0.9253 0.8843 0.9280 0.9328 0.9689 0.9508 0.9149 0.8845 – 0.8200 – – 0.9712
JP2K 0.9362 0.9606 0.7573 0.8870 0.8934 0.8692 0.9450 0.9172 0.8911 0.9342 0.9033 0.8950 – 0.8470 – – 0.9031

Hit Count 0 11 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 6 1 13
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Table 2 Overall performance comparison of the proposed NR-IQA technique in terms of median SRC, PCC and RMSE for LIVE, TID2013, CSIQ and CLIVE databases

IQA technique LIVE [50] TID2013 [44] CSIQ [21] CLIVE [8]

SRC PCC RMSE SRC PCC RMSE SRC PCC RMSE SRC PCC RMSE

PSNR [14] 0.8755 0.8709 13.426 0.6395 0.6382 0.5550 0.8056 0.7998 0.1492 – – –
SSIM [54] 0.9527 0.9393 9.3691 0.6370 0.6312 0.5570 0.8367 0.8149 0.1481 – – –
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BIQI [36] 0.8042 0.8280 15.388 0.8415 0.8598 0.7872 0.7598 0.8353 0.1542 0.4621 0.4490 19.981
DIIVINE [37] 0.9003 0.8943 12.329 0.8923 0.8867 0.6714 0.8697 0.9010 0.1249 0.5902 0.6075 18.742
BLIINDS-II [48] 0.9304 0.9361 9.5185 0.9046 0.9197 0.6117 0.9003 0.9282 0.1028 0.4618 0.4473 20.011
BRISQUE [34] 0.9393 0.9430 8.7214 0.9336 0.9360 0.5442 0.9085 0.9356 0.0980 0.6089 0.6088 17.742
NSS [64] 0.9470 0.9500 8.7141 0.9260 0.9200 0.5321 0.9050 0.9250 0.1002 0.6121 0.6290 17.241
M3 [57] 0.9511 0.9468 8.0444 0.9369 0.9406 0.5377 0.9243 0.9457 0.0909 0.5064 0.5532 20.573
Pseudo [33] 0.9355 0.9364 8.7251 0.8890 0.8854 0.5672 0.9309 0.9315 0.0783 0.5955 0.5987 18.5512
FSI-RR [29] 0.8826 0.8821 12.8720 0.5798 0.6111 0.9945 0.9175 0.9265 0.1011 0.5810 0.5834 18.1911
MSDD [15] 0.9472 0.9488 8.7719 0.9324 0.9416 0.4687 0.9105 0.9227 0.1080 0.4871 0.4862 19.6253
CORNIA [62] 0.9466 0.9487 – 0.8990 0.9347 – 0.8845 0.9241 – 0.9151 0.9373 –
Author's personal copy

MGDNN [31] 0.9510 0.9490 – – – – – – – – – –

DIQaM-NR [3] 0.9600 0.9720 – 0.8350 0.8550 – – – – 0.6060 0.6010 –
BIECON [20] 0.9580 0.9320 – 0.7210 0.7650 – 0.8250 0.8380 – 0.5950 0.6130 –
SESANIA [22] 0.9340 0.9476 – – – – – – – – – –
MEON [32] – – – 0.9120 0.9120 – 0.9320 0.9440 – – – –
VRPON [11] 0.9820 0.9800 – 0.8520 0.9610 – 0.8600 0.8750 – 0.6300 0.7050 –
HFD-BIQA [56] 0.9480 0.951 8.437 0.6810 0.7640 0.7970 0.8420 0.8900 0.1200 – – –
Proposed 0.9530 0.9511 7.9041 0.9411 0.9451 0.5117 0.9365 0.9481 0.0891 0.6342 0.6392 17.010
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The performance of the proposed technique in comparison to different NR-IQA tech-

niques over whole databases is presented in Table 2. The boldface values represent the best
performing evaluation parameters. It is observed that the proposed technique performs best
over the majority of the databases i.e., TID2013, CSIQ, and CLIVE database, and is ranked
second-best on the LIVE database.
The results of Table 2 are validated by the box plot in Fig. 4, which is constructed using
SRC scores between the predicted quality score and MOS over 1000 iterations. It can be
observed that the interquartile range of the box plot for the proposed technique is less as
compared to other NR-IQA techniques, which shows that the deviation in predicted quality
score from MOS is small for the proposed technique. The higher position of the box plot
for the proposed technique in comparison to other NR-IQA techniques signifies its better
performance.
Table 3 shows the performance of the proposed technique in comparison to state-of-the-
art NR-IQA techniques when training and testing are performed on different IQA database.
The common types of distortions found in LIVE, TID2013, and CSIQ databases, i.e., JP2K,
GB, WN, and JPEG are considered. For the CLIVE database all distortion types present in
the LIVE, CSIQ, and TID2013 databases are considered. The boldface values in Table 3
represent the best performing NR-IQA techniques. It can be observed that the proposed
technique performs best among state-of-the-art NR-IQA techniques based on handcrafted
features or DCNN irrespective of the training and testing database. The proposed technique
also performs well for the CLIVE IQA database, which contains images taken in real-time
from mobile device cameras. Most of the DCNN based NR-IQA techniques do not report
results of cross-database validation, which may be due to the higher computational cost and
requirement of a large amount of time the training and testing associated with DCNNs.
Figure 5 shows the scatter plot between MOS values provided in the database and the
predicted quality score. It can be seen from the scatter plots that the proposed NR-IQA
technique shows a high correlation between the MOS and predicted quality score on the
CSIQ, TID2013, and LIVE database. The scatter plot in Fig. 5d shows that there is some
correlation between the DMOS and the predicted score since the scatter plot does not have
a negative slope. This is also evident by the results given in Tables 2 and 3 that the proposed
technique shows satisfactory performance on the CLIVE database.

0.9

0.85

0.8

0.75
SRC score

0.7

0.65

0.6

0.55

0.5

0.45
BIQI DIIVINE M3 BLIINDS-II MSS FSI-RR BRISQUE Pseudo MSDD Proposed
BIQA technique

Fig. 4 Box plot for different NR-IQA techniques averaged over LIVE, TID2013 and CSIQ database
Table 3 Overall SRC scores for each NR-IQA technique using cross validation across three databases

Databases BIQI BLIINDS-II BRISQUE DIIVINE M3 Pseudo FSI-RR MSDD CORNIA DIQaM-NR HFD-BIQA Proposed
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Training Testing [36] [48] [34] [37] [57] [33] [29] [15] [62] [3] [56]

LIVE [50] CSIQ [21] 0.7805 0.8878 0.8993 0.8571 0.9108 0.9003 0.8870 0.8794 0.8973 0.9080 0.8430 0.9205
LIVE [50] TID2013 [44] 0.8174 0.9036 0.9030 0.8579 0.9214 0.8580 0.5493 0.9017 0.8932 0.8670 0.8990 0.9310
LIVE [50] CLIVE [8] 0.2621 0.2618 0.4089 0.3902 0.3064 0.3955 0.3810 0.2871 – – – 0.4342
CSIQ [21] LIVE [50] 0.4538 0.9365 0.9311 0.8475 0.9459 0.8955 0.8526 0.9172 0.9279 – 0.9180 0.9621
CSIQ [21] TID2013 [44] 0.6987 0.8015 0.8996 0.8233 0.9061 0.9001 0.8872 0.8785 0.8704 – 0.8880 0.9110
CSIQ [21] CLIVE [8] 0.2122 0.2115 0.3589 0.3402 0.2562 0.3451 0.3310 0.2361 – – – 0.3792
TID2013 [44] LIVE [50] 0.7621 0.9379 0.9278 0.8648 0.9336 0.8955 0.8421 0.9068 0.9091 – 0.8900 0.9417
TID2013 [44] CSIQ [21] 0.8019 0.8757 0.8675 0.8491 0.8383 0.8803 0.8672 0.8609 0.8381 0.7170 0.8210 0.8831
Author's personal copy

TID2013 [44] CLIVE [8] 0.4026 0.5313 0.4021 0.4219 0.5524 0.4463 0.5351 0.5309 – – – 0.7269
CLIVE [8] LIVE [50] 0.3619 0.3620 0.5069 0.4892 0.4061 0.4959 0.4831 0.3893 – – – 0.7351
CLIVE [8] CSIQ [21] 0.3127 0.3125 0.4591 0.4406 0.3179 0.4441 0.4314 0.3362 – – – 0.7792
CLIVE [8] TID2013 [44] 0.5013 0.6215 0.5123 0.5217 0.6525 0.5464 0.6353 0.6312 – – – 0.8271
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1 1
0.9 0.9
Predicted Quality Score

Predicted Quality Score

0.8 0.8
0.7 0.7
0.6 0.6
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3
0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
MOS MOS
(a) (b)
1 1
0.9 0.9
Predicted Quality Score

Predicted Quality Score

0.8 0.8
0.7 0.7
0.6 0.6
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3
0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
MOS MOS
(c) (d)
Fig. 5 Scatter plot for proposed NR-IQA technique on a CSIQ, b TID2013, c LIVE and d CLIVE database

The proposed technique shows better performance in comparison to state-of-the-art NR-

IQA techniques over all the databases. Determining the distortion type affecting the image is
a very challenging task in a real-world scenario. The proposed technique offers an advantage
of not requiring to determine the distortion type before computing the image quality score,
making it suitable for use in real-time. This is evident from the performance of the proposed
technique on the CLIVE database. The better performance of the proposed technique over
all the databases is due to the fact that the distribution of the extracted features is similar
for images with similar MOS values and different for images with different MOS values
irrespective of image content, distortion type and IQA database. This fact is evident from
the results presented in Fig. 3. These techniques aim to extract features that have similar
distribution for images with similar quality scores irrespective of distortion type and image
content. The technique proposed in this work extracts features that have similar distribution
for images with similar MOS values and does not require a curve fitting to a NSS model for
the prediction of quality score.

4 Conclusion

This paper proposes a simple yet effective approach towards NR-IQA using DCT based
features. Existing NR-IQA techniques that extract handcrafted features usually utilize curve
fitting on extracted features, which may lead to errors in the representation of NSS proper-
ties of the distorted image. These errors lead to degradation in the performance of existing
NR-IQA techniques. NR-IQA techniques based on DCNNs also do not perform curve fit-
ting and are considered model-independent, but they require large training data, which is
 Author's personal copy
Multimedia Tools and Applications

not available for NR-IQA. Using a pre-trained DCNN and performing data augmentation
may lead to overfitting problem. There is a weak connection between image classification
and predicting image quality, which affects the efficiency of transfer learning. Furthermore,
NR-IQA techniques based on DCNNs are computationally expensive as compared to tech-
niques that extract handcrafted features. The proposed technique extracts nine handcrafted
DCT based features. The extracted features are given as an input to a SVR model for the
prediction of image quality score. The proposed technique does not require any curve fitting
that helps in reducing errors introduced in the representation of NSS feature distribution.
The extracted features show similar distribution for different images with the same MOS
and dissimilar distribution for image with different MOS scores. The experimental results
of the proposed technique over four IQA databases show that the features used to result in
a better performance, when compared to state-of-the-art NR-IQA techniques. The results
also show that the proposed technique is image and database independent, since it performs
well over a majority of the distortion types and IQA databases. Furthermore, the proposed
technique shows promising results over the CLIVE database, which contains images taken
in real-time and different lighting conditions.

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Affiliations

Imran Fareed Nizami1 · Mobeen ur Rehman2 · Muhammad Majid3 ·

Syed Muhammad Anwar4

Mobeen ur Rehman
cmobeenrahman@gmail.com
Muhammad Majid
m.majid@uettaxila.edu.pk
Syed Muhammad Anwar
s.anwar@uettaxila.edu.pk
1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Bahria University, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
2 Department of Avionics Engineering, Air University, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan
3 Department of Computer Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology Taxila,
Taxila, 47050, Pakistan
4 Department of Software Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology Taxila,
Taxila, 47050, Pakistan