Video packet loss concealment detection based on image content

Compressed video transmitted over unreliable channels such as wireless networks or the Internet may suffer from packet loss. A packet loss leads to image impairment that may cause significant degradation in image quality. In most practical systems, packet loss is detected at the transport layer and a decoder error concealment post-processor tries to mitigate the effect of lost packets. This helps to improve image quality but could still leave some noticeable impairments in the video. In some applications such as no-reference video quality evaluation, detection of concealment impairments is desired. If only video coding layer information is available, concealment has to be detected based on image content. In this paper, a novel technique for detecting impairments in a video sequence caused by packet loss after its concealment is proposed. The detection is based on image content only. Simulation results show good temporal and spatial concealment detection accuracy.