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 eff...

The discrete cosine transform (DCT) is widely used in image and video coding schemes. By applying the DCT to image blocks and quantizing the DCT coefficients, efficient image compression can be achieved. However, the quantization of the DCT coefficients introduces errors in the decompressed images, which appear as blocky artifacts. The blocky artifacts can be converted into “Gaussian-type” nois...

A new approach is proposed to solve the blocking artifact problem that results from block transform-based image compression at very low bit-rates. In our approach, we attempt to recover from the quantization noise for the transform coefficients by adding uniform random noise to them. This results in a decompressed image that is corrupted by noise of the AGWN type, rather than a blocky image. Th...

L1-norm is better than L2-norm at dealing with noisy data and yielding blocky models, features crucial in many geophysical applications. In this report, we develop a hybrid-norm solver proposed by Claerbout (2009) to perform L1 regressions. The solver is tested on a 1-D field RMS velocity inversion, a 2-D regularized Kirchhoff migration inversion and a 2-D velocity analysis problem. The results...

Veins in rocks have been studied for well over 150 years, initially driven by interest in how economically mineralised veins formed (e.g. Buckland, 1836; Hulin, 1929). Veins provide information on how fluids migrate through the crust, and how material is transferred by these fluids. Many studies have suggested that veins (including ‘crack-seal’ textured veins; Ramsay, 1980) form as a result of ...

Nafion polyelectrolyte is widely used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) due to its high proton conductivity. The properties of hydrated Nafion are attributed to its nanophase-segregated structure in which hydrophilic clusters are embedded in a hydrophobic matrix. However, there has been little characterization of how the monomeric sequence of the Nafion chain affects the nanoph...

Three types of Al-5Ti master alloys were synthesized by a method of thermal explosion reaction in pure molten aluminum. Performance comparison of Al-5Ti master alloy in grain refinement of commercial purity Al with different additions (0.6%, 1.0%, 1.6%, 2.0%, and 3.0%) and holding time (10, 30, 60 and 120 min) were investigated. The results show that Al-5Ti master alloy with blocky TiAl₃ partic...

In this work, we used two types of impairments in a psychophysical experiment to measure the overall annoyance and individual strength of three impairment features (fuzzy, blocky, and blurry). The impairments were generated by compressing the original videos with MPEG-2 at two different bitrates: 1.0 and 7.5 Mbps. The heavily compressed videos presented blurry and blocky impairments, while the ...

For image estimation we use a hyperbolic penalty function. The center of a hyperbola is parabolic like `2 norm fitting. Its asymptotes are like `1 norm fitting. A transition threshold must be chosen for regression equations of data fitting and another for model regularization. We adapt the conjugate direction method to solve this problem in a manner we call the HYCD method. We present examples ...