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A simple spatial domain method for quality evaluation of blurred images

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Abstract

In this paper, a simple yet highly accurate algorithm for No-Reference quality estimation of blurred images is proposed. The proposed work is motivated by the fact that when blurring occurs, regions with large pixel variations are likely to be affected more than the regions with small pixel variations. Since the human visual system is also more attentive to distortions in the regions with large pixel variations; therefore, it will be advantageous to exploit them for blurriness estimation. Moreover, blurring also causes loss of details, thereby resulting in the decrease in mean pixel variation and the maximum pixel variation. It is also observed that the ratio of mean to maximum pixel variation increases with blurriness. Motivated by these facts, the maximum pixel variation and mean pixel variation are utilized to estimate the quality of the image affected by the blurriness. The proposed algorithm is highly competitive and outperforms most of the state-of-the-art algorithms both in time-complexity as well as accuracy over various standard databases.

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The database used in this work is publicly available and the source is cited in the paper.

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Code can be made available on the request.

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Funding

Md Amir Baig acknowledges the financial support for this work from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India under Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme (Unique Awardee Number is MEITY-PHD-562) for Electronics and IT.

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Author notes

  1. A. A. Moinuddin and E. Khan have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Women’s Polytechnic, Zakir Husain College of Engineering & Technology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, 202002, India

    Md Amir Baig

  2. Department of Electronics Engineering, Zakir Husain College of Engineering & Technology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, 202002, India

    Athar A. Moinuddin & E. Khan

Authors
  1. Md Amir Baig
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  2. Athar A. Moinuddin
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  3. E. Khan
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Contributions

Md Amir Baig wrote the main manuscript. Athar A. Moinuddin and E. Khan have given conceptual inputs during the manuscript preparation.

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Correspondence to Md Amir Baig.

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Baig, M.A., Moinuddin, A.A. & Khan, E. A simple spatial domain method for quality evaluation of blurred images. Multimedia Systems 30, 28 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-023-01223-6

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