Structural Similarity Index for Image Assessment Using Pixel Difference and Saturation Awareness

Until now, a lot of image quality assessment techniques or tools for optimal human visual system(HVS)-awareness have been researched and SSIM(Structural SIMilarity) and its improved techniques are representative examples. However, they often cannot cope with various images and different distortion types robustly, and thus this can cause a large gap between their index values and HVS-awareness. In this paper, we conduct image quality assessment on SSIM and its variants intensively and analyze the causes of each component function's observed anomalies. Then, we propose a novel image quality assessment technique to compensate and improve such anomalies. Additionally, through extensive image assessment simulations, we show that the proposed technique can indicate HVS-awareness more robustly and consistently than SSIM and its variants for various images and different distortion types.