Picture Quality of 360° Images Compressed by Emerging Compression Algorithms

Recently, interest about images and photos in omni-directional format (360°, field-of-view) are gradually increasing. To ensure high image quality at the transfer, storing and sharing of such images, advanced compression tools are required. This paper provides an objective-based comparison of emerging compression algorithms (JPEG XL, HEIC, AVIF), implemented in a graphic viewer and editor, for 360° images. For this purpose, four images from publicly available databases and two self-made images are used and compressed to different quality levels. Different objective metrics are used to evaluate the visual quality of images. Compared to the popular image-based compression algorithm JPEG, the emerging compression tools show high efficiency and applicability for omnidirectional images.