Task-specific information: an imaging system analysis tool

We present a novel method for computing the information content of an image. We introduce the notion of task-specific information (TSI) in order to quantify imaging system performance for a given task. This new approach employs a recently-discovered relationship between the Shannon mutual-information and minimum estimation error. We demonstrate the utility of the TSI formulation by applying it to several familiar imaging systems including (a) geometric imagers, (b) diffraction-limiter imagers, and (c) projective/compressive imagers. Imaging system TSI performance is analyzed for two tasks: (a) detection, and (b) classification.