Perceptual contrast sensitivity based video quality assessment in DCT domain

Video quality assessment can be performed by comparing distorted video with the undistorted version by taking human vision system (HVS) into account. A perceptual vision sensitivity model is developed in this paper by systematically integrating visual attention and foveation mechanism into contrast sensitivity function (CSF). The model can accurately estimate a critical frequency beyond which the HVS cannot perceive contrast changes. Subsequently, a video quality metric is proposed by applying the new sensitivity model to a similarity measure between distorted video and reference one in the DCT domain. Experimental results with respect to publicly available video quality databases have demonstrated promising performance of the proposed quality metric.