Content-Dependent Image Quality Assessment for Scientific Images

The Mastcam color imaging system on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover acquires images that are often JPEG compressed before being downlinked to Earth. Depending on the context of the observation, this compression can result in image artifacts that might introduce problems in the scientific interpretation of the data and might require the image to be retransmitted losslessly. We developed methods to streamline the tedious process of manually analyzing images using what we term context-dependent image quality assessment, a process wherein the context and intent behind the image observation determine the acceptable image quality threshold. Co-investigators: Dr. Jim Bell (ASU) and Dr. Heni Ben Amor (ASU). This work was in part supported by subcontracts from the NASA/JPL Mars Science Laboratory project and a NASA STTR sub-contract from Applied Research, LLC. Read the research article here