Visual Saliency Based Just Noticeable Difference Estimation in DWT Domain

Abstract

It has been known that human visual systems (HVSs) can be applied to describe the underlying masking properties for the image processing. In general, HVS can only perceive small changes in a scene when they are greater than the just noticeable distortion (JND) threshold. Recently, the cognitive resources of huma visual attention mechanisms are limited, which can not concentrate on all stimuli. To be specific, only more important stimuli will react from the mechanisms. When it comes to visual attention mechanisms, we need to introduce the visual saliency to model the human perception more accurately. In this paper, we presents a new wavelet-based JND estimation method that takes into account the interrelationship between visual saliency and JND threshold. In the experimental part, we verify it from both subjective and objective aspects. In addition, the experimental results show that extracting the saliency map of the image in the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain and then modulating its JND threshold is better than the non-modulated JND effect.