The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and widespread use of smartphones have resulted in an exponential growth of image data, both real (camera-captured) and virtual (AI-generated). This surge underscores the critical need for robust image quality assessment (IQA) methods that accurately reflect human visual perception. Traditional IQA techniques primarily rely on spatial features - such as signal-to-noise ratio, local structural distortions, and texture inconsistencies - to identify artifacts. While effective for unprocessed or conventionally altered images, these methods fall short in the context of modern image post-processing powered by deep neural networks (DNNs). The rise of DNN-based models for image generation, enhancement, and restoration has significantly improved visual quality, yet made accurate assessment increasingly complex. To address this, we propose a novel IQA approach that bridges the gap between deep learning methods and human perception. Our model disentangles deep features into high-level semantic information and low-level perceptual details, treating each stream separately. These features are then combined with conventional IQA metrics to provide a more comprehensive evaluation framework. This hybrid design enables the model to assess both global context and intricate image details, better reflecting the human visual process, which first interprets overall structure before attending to fine-grained elements. The final stage employs a multilayer perceptron (MLP) to map the integrated features into a concise quality score. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves improved consistency with human perceptual judgments compared to existing IQA models.
Lao et al. (Thu,) studied this question.