Nonreference Image Quality Evaluation Algorithm Based on Wavelet Convolutional Neural Network and Information Entropy

Abstract

The image quality evaluation method, based on the convolutional neural network (CNN), achieved good evaluation performance. However, this method can easily lead the visual quality of image sub-blocks to change with the spatial position after the image is processed by various distortions. Consequently, the visual quality of the entire image is difficult to reflect objectively. On this basis, this study combines wavelet transform and CNN method to propose an image quality evaluation method based on wavelet CNN. The low-frequency, horizontal, vertical, and diagonal sub-band images decomposed by wavelet transform are selected as the inputs of convolution neural network. The feature information in multiple directions is extracted by convolution neural network. Then, the information entropy of each sub-band image is calculated and used as the weight of each sub-band image quality. Finally, the quality evaluation values of four sub-band images are weighted and fused to obtain the visual quality values of the entire image. Experimental results show that the proposed method gains advantage from the global and local information of the image, thereby further improving its effectiveness and generalization.

Keywords

• nonreference image quality evaluation
• convolutional neural network
• deep learning
• wavelet transform
• information entropy