Enhancing NR-IQA Model Robustness through Simple Image Compression Techniques

No-Reference Image Quality Assessment (NR-IQA) plays a crucial role in various real-world applications by predicting image quality scores without the need for reference images. Despite the impressive performance of deep learning-based NR-IQA models, they remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks, which introduce imperceptible perturbations to input images, causing significant changes in predicted scores. In this study, we explore the use of simple JPEG compression techniques, as well as their combination with norm regularization training, to defend against these adversarial attacks. Our results demonstrate that image compression is an effective method to enhance model robustness, and it can further improve the robustness of NR-IQA models when combined with appropriate training strategies. Since excessive compression may reduce performance on clean images, it is essential to strike a balance. This work provides valuable insights into designing effective image compression methods for NR-IQA models.