DEVELOPMENT OF A MOTION IMAGERY QUALITY METRIC

The motion imagery community would benefit from the availability of standard measures for assessing image interpretability. The National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scale (NIIRS) has served as a community standard for still imagery, but no comparable scale exists for motion imagery. Several considerations unique to motion imagery indicate that the standard methodology employed in the past for NIIRS development may not be applicable or, at a minimum, require modifications. Traditional methods for NIIRS development rely on a close linkage between perceived image quality, as captured by specific image interpretation tasks, and the sensor parameters associated with image acquisition. The dynamic nature of motion imagery suggests that this type of linkage may not exist or may be modulated by other factors. A set of studies sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) have been conducted to understand and quantify the effects of critical factors. Factors that could affect perceived interpretability of motion imagery that have been explored in these studies include: E Target motion