Computational Visual Perception for Image/Video Processing : Quality Assessment and Enhancement

Over the last fifty years, research and development in image processing have been driving advances  in many high-tech areas, including medical and scientific imaging, digital cinema, computational photography, biometrics, remote sensing, among others. With the development of new imaging modalities and multimedia products, many new approaches have been proposed in this field of research. The research focus is however steadily shifting towards developing new mathematical models rather than understanding the image signal as a physical quantity and its interaction with the observer; unfortunately, the human user is often ignored in the image processing chain. Whereas, in many applications, such as diagnosis, recognition and evaluation, the human observer plays a prominent role in decision-making, based on visual assessment of images. Therefore, exploiting knowledge about the Human Visual System (HVS) in the design of multimedia processing techniques appears as a promising direction.

This tutorial provides an overview of the most recent trends and of the future research in image and video processing in a common perceptually based computational framework. The most relevant characteristics and properties of the HVS are presented on the light of the recent findings in a concise and practical way. The concepts and methods will be introduced and illustrated through various real-world applications.

Dr. Azeddine BEGHDADI is Full Professor at the University of Paris 13 (Institut Galilée) Sorbonne Paris Cite since 2000 the director of L2TI laboratory (from 2010 to 2016). He received Maitrise in Physics and Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies in Optics and Signal Processing from University Orsay-Paris XI (Equivalent: Masters of Sciences) in June 1982 and June 1983 respectively and the PhD in Physics (Specialism: Optics and Signal Processing) from University Paris 6 in June 1986. Dr. Beghdadi worked at different places during his PhD thesis, including “Laboratoire d’Optique des Solides” (University Pierre et Marie Curie – Paris 6) and “Groupe d’Analyse d’Images Biomédicales” (CNAM Paris). From 1987 to 1989, he has been appointed “Assistant Associé” (Lecturer) at University Paris 13. During the period 1987-1998, he was with LPMTM CNRS Laboratory working on Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) materials image analysis. He published over than 290 international refereed scientific papers. He is a founding member of the L2TI laboratory. His research interests include image quality enhancement and assessment, image and video compression, bio-inspired models for image analysis and processing, and physics-based image analysis. Dr. Beghdadi is the founder and Co-Chair of the European Workshop on Visual Information Processing (EUVIP). Dr Beghdadi is a member of the editorial board of “Signal Processing: Image Communication” journal, Elsevier, EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing, the Journal of Electronic Imaging, and Mathematical Problems in Sciences Journal. Dr Beghdadi is a Senior member of IEEE, EURASIP member and member of the IEEE-MMTC.