A Content-Aware Image Retargeting Quality Assessment Method Using Foreground and Global Measurement

Abstract

Image retargeting methods aim to minimize the perceptual loss while changing sizes and aspect ratios of images. Since optimal retargeting methods for different images are generally not the same, the image retargeting quality assessment (IRQA) becomes a meaningful task. This paper proposes a content-aware image retargeting quality assessment method using foreground and global measurement to achieve better performance. In our proposed method, images are first divided into two categories according to the foreground object detection result, and then different corresponding measurements are designed for them. For those with obvious foreground object, both foreground and global measurement are applied. For others, only global measurement is conducted. Foreground measurement includes two complementary features: the high-level semantic similarity feature and the low-level size ratio feature. Global measurement includes another two features: an improved aspect ratio similarity (ARS) feature and edge group similarity (EGS) feature. Two public databases, i.e., the RetargetMe and CUHK, have been evaluated, and experimental results demonstrate that our method is quite effective, and it also provides state-of-the-art performance in the IRQA. a INDEX TERMS Image retargeting quality assessment, image quality assessment, foreground object quality measurement, semantic similarity feature.