ABSTRACT
One challenge faced by research scientists in the field of image quality is convincing product engineers, marketing personnel, management, and other scientists that image quality can be characterized in a quantitative fashion. We will address this challenge from two different viewpoints, one analytical, and the other historical. First, in Sects. 1.2 and 1.3, three schemes for classifying perceptual attributes are developed, and a working definition of image quality is developed from consideration of the correlations between the resulting categories. Second, in Sects. 1.4 and 1.5, very brief overviews of historical and more current research are presented, showing how investigators in this field have sought to quantify image quality. The final section of the chapter is intended to place the work described in this volume into perspective by comparing it with previous efforts in the field of image quality research.
