Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features

Abstract High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, with their expanded range of brightness and color, provide a far more realistic and immersive viewing experience compared to Low Dynamic Range (LDR) images. However, the significant increase in peak luminance and contrast inherent in HDR images often accentu...

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Main Authors: Donghui Wan, Xiuhua Jiang, Qiangguo Yu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-03-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94005-1
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author Donghui Wan
Xiuhua Jiang
Qiangguo Yu
author_facet Donghui Wan
Xiuhua Jiang
Qiangguo Yu
author_sort Donghui Wan
collection DOAJ
description Abstract High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, with their expanded range of brightness and color, provide a far more realistic and immersive viewing experience compared to Low Dynamic Range (LDR) images. However, the significant increase in peak luminance and contrast inherent in HDR images often accentuates artifacts, thus limiting the effectiveness of traditional LDR-based image quality assessment (IQA) algorithms when applied to HDR content. To address this, we propose a novel blind IQA method tailored specifically for HDR images, which incorporates both the perception and inference processes of the human visual system (HVS). Our approach begins with multi-scale Retinex decomposition to generate reflectance maps with varying sensitivity, followed by the calculation of gradient similarities from these maps to model the perception process. Deep feature maps are then extracted from the last pooling layer of a pretrained VGG16 network to capture inference characteristics. These gradient similarity maps and deep feature maps are subsequently aggregated for quality prediction using support vector regression (SVR). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves outstanding performance, outperforming other state-of-the-art HDR IQA metrics.
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spelling doaj-art-e920ec9761694f23abfb5f7c7cfbc7ee2025-08-20T02:49:29ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-03-0115111210.1038/s41598-025-94005-1Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference featuresDonghui Wan0Xiuhua Jiang1Qiangguo Yu2State Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication, Communication University of ChinaState Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication, Communication University of ChinaSchool of Electronic Information, Huzhou CollegeAbstract High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, with their expanded range of brightness and color, provide a far more realistic and immersive viewing experience compared to Low Dynamic Range (LDR) images. However, the significant increase in peak luminance and contrast inherent in HDR images often accentuates artifacts, thus limiting the effectiveness of traditional LDR-based image quality assessment (IQA) algorithms when applied to HDR content. To address this, we propose a novel blind IQA method tailored specifically for HDR images, which incorporates both the perception and inference processes of the human visual system (HVS). Our approach begins with multi-scale Retinex decomposition to generate reflectance maps with varying sensitivity, followed by the calculation of gradient similarities from these maps to model the perception process. Deep feature maps are then extracted from the last pooling layer of a pretrained VGG16 network to capture inference characteristics. These gradient similarity maps and deep feature maps are subsequently aggregated for quality prediction using support vector regression (SVR). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves outstanding performance, outperforming other state-of-the-art HDR IQA metrics.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94005-1High dynamic range imageNo reference quality assessmentPerception processInference process
spellingShingle Donghui Wan
Xiuhua Jiang
Qiangguo Yu
Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features
Scientific Reports
High dynamic range image
No reference quality assessment
Perception process
Inference process
title Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features
title_full Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features
title_fullStr Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features
title_full_unstemmed Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features
title_short Blind HDR image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features
title_sort blind hdr image quality assessment based on aggregating perception and inference features
topic High dynamic range image
No reference quality assessment
Perception process
Inference process
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94005-1
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AT xiuhuajiang blindhdrimagequalityassessmentbasedonaggregatingperceptionandinferencefeatures
AT qiangguoyu blindhdrimagequalityassessmentbasedonaggregatingperceptionandinferencefeatures