A universal hypercomplex color image quality index

In this paper, a color image is represented by a hypercomplex matrix. A universal objective hypercomplex color image quality index is then presented. The proposed index is designed by modeling any color image distortion as a combination of five different factors: loss of correlation, luminance distortion, contrast distortion, color distortion, and intercomponent distortion among the red (R), green (G), and blue (B) components. The analytical results show that the proposed index can measure whether the distortion types are from the structural and/or color information of a color image. The experiments indicate that the proposed index is in agreement with the subjective visual perception of human beings.