Ehsan Nadernejad

Modeling Power-Constrained Optimal Backlight Dimming for Color Displays

In this paper, we present a framework for modeling color liquid crystal displays (LCDs) having local light-emitting diode (LED) backlight with dimming capability. The proposed framework includes critical aspects like leakage, clipping, light diffusion and human perception of luminance and allows adjustable penalization of power consumption. Based on the framework, we have designed a set of optimization-based backlight dimming algorithms providing a perceptual optimal balance of clipping and leakage, if necessary. The novel algorithms are compared with several other schemes known from the literature, using both objective measures and subjective assessment. The results show that the novel algorithms provide better quality at a given energy level or lower energy at a given quality level.

How to evaluate objective video quality metrics reliably

The typical procedure for evaluating the performance of different objective quality metrics and indices involves comparisons between subjective quality ratings and the quality indices obtained using the objective metrics in question on the known video sequences. Several correlation indicators can be employed to assess how well the subjective ratings can be predicted from the objective values. In this paper, we give an overview of the potential sources for uncertainties and inaccuracies in such studies, related both to the method of comparison, possible inaccuracies in the subjective data, as well as processing of subjective data. We also suggest some general guidelines for researchers to make comparison studies of objective video quality metrics more reliable and useful for the practitioners in the field.

Block-Based Gradient Descent for Local Backlight Dimming and Flicker Reduction

Local backlight dimming technology is a two-fold improvement for LED backlit LCD screens that allows to reduce power consumption and increase visual quality. This paper presents a fast version of an iterative backlight dimming algorithm based on gradient descent search. The speed is increased by exploiting the local uniformity of backlight to reduce the complexity for determining the optimal backlight of a given image. The algorithm is adapted to video sequences by using the backlight of the previous frame as a starting point to calculate the backlight for the current frame. Fast variations of backlight dimming over time can produce a visually annoying flicker artifact. To avoid this artifact, a control mechanism is also proposed.

A new modified fast fractal image compression algorithm

Abstract In this paper, a new fractal image compression algorithm is proposed, in which the time of the encoding process is considerably reduced. The algorithm exploits a domain pool reduction approach, along with the use of innovative predefined values for contrast scaling factor, S, instead of searching it across. Only the domain blocks with entropy greater than a threshold are considered to belong to the domain pool. The algorithm has been tested for some well-known images and the results have been compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. The experiments show that our proposed algorithm has considerably lower encoding time than the other algorithms giving approximately the same quality for the encoded images.

Artifact reduction of compressed images and video combining adaptive fuzzy filtering and directional anisotropic diffusion

Fuzzy filtering is one of the recently developed methods for reducing distortion in compressed images and video. In this paper, we combine the powerful anisotropic diffusion equations with fuzzy filtering in order to reduce the impact of artifacts. Based on the directional nature of the blocking and ringing artifacts, we have applied directional anisotropic diffusion. Besides that, the selection of the adaptive threshold parameter for the diffusion coefficient has also improved the performance of the algorithm. Experimental results on JPEG compressed images as well as MJPEG and H.264 compressed videos show improvement in artifact reduction of the proposed algorithm over other directional and spatial fuzzy filters.

Quality assessment of images displayed on LCD screen with local backlight dimming

This paper presents a subjective experiment collecting quality assessment of images displayed on a LCD with local backlight dimming using two methodologies: absolute category ratings and paired-comparison. Some well-known objective quality metrics are then applied to the stimuli and their respective performance are analyzed. The HDR-VDP metric seems to achieve good performance on every source image.

Controlling Power Consumption for Displays With Backlight Dimming

Backlight dimming of Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) is a technology which aims at saving power and improving visual quality. The evolution of energy standards and the increasing public expectations regarding power consumption have made it necessary for backlight systems to manage their power. Such a control is challenging to implement, because for LCD displays quality and power are closely interlinked, and one cannot be modified without affecting the other. To address this issue, we present a framework for power controlled backlight dimming defining some key concepts. Two methods to obtain backlights with a predefined power level for images are presented: one method has low complexity and the other achieves high performance in terms of quality/power trade-off. Those methods are evaluated on a modeled Light-Emitting Diode edge-lit backlight display. The high-performance method performs significantly better than other algorithms from the literature, when considering both calculated power and quality. This high-performance method is then extended to video in three modes. The first mode favors high quality in a power-aware manner and allow significant power variations, the second mode has strict power constraints and the third one provides a trade-off between the other two.

Image dependent energy-constrained local backlight dimming

In this work, we consider and propose two extensions to an optimization-based image dependent backlight dimming algorithm. The first extension introduces error weighting based on human perception of luminance, aiming to improve the perceived image quality; the second extension adds an adjustable term for power consumption to the cost function, allowing flexible power management. Experimental results show that the proposed solution can achieve better results than other algorithms at several power consumption levels.

Image denoising using new pixon representation based on fuzzy filtering and partial differential equations

In this paper, we have proposed two extensions to pixon-based image modeling. The first one is using bicubic interpolation instead of bilinear interpolation and the second one is using fuzzy filtering method, aiming to improve the quality of the pixonal image. Finally, partial differential equations (PDEs) are applied on the pixonal image for noise removing. The proposed algorithm has been examined on variety of standard images and their performance compared with the existing algorithms. Experimental results show that in comparison with the other existing methods, the proposed algorithm has a better performance in denoising and preserving image edges.

Enhancing perceived quality of compressed images and video with anisotropic diffusion and fuzzy filtering

Fuzzy filtering has recently been applied and optimized for reducing distortion in compressed images and video. In this paper, we present a method combining the powerful anisotropic diffusion equations with fuzzy filtering for removing blocking and ringing artifacts. Due to the directional nature of these artifacts, we have applied directional anisotropic diffusion. In order to improve the performance of the algorithm, we select the threshold parameter for the diffusion coefficient adaptively. Two different methods based on this approach are presented: one designed for still images and the other for YUV video sequences. For the video sequences, different filters are applied to luminance (Y) and chrominance (U,V) components. The performance of the proposed method has been compared against several other methods by using different objective quality metrics and a subjective comparison study. Both objective and subjective results on JPEG compressed images, as well as MJPEG and H.264/AVC compressed video, indicate that the proposed algorithms employing directional and spatial fuzzy filters achieve better artifact reduction than other methods. In particular, robust improvements with H.264/AVC video have been gained with several different content types.