Blind Measurement of Blocking Artifacts in Images

The objective measurement of blocking artifacts plays an important role in the design, optimization, and assessment of image and video coding systems. We propose a new approach that can blindly measure blocking artifacts in images without reference to the originals. The key idea is to model the blocky image as a non-blocky image interfered with a pure blocky signal. The task of the blocking effect measurement algorithm is then to detect and evaluate the power of the blocky signal. The proposed approach has the flexibility to integrate human visual system features such as the luminance and the texture masking effects.