A novel quality evaluation algorithm for SAR image based on human visual system

Traditional quality evaluation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Image is mainly based on the objective indicators of point target and surface target. However, it lacks subjective knowledge of human visual. To overcome this shortcoming in traditional image evaluation method, an innovative method by employing the human visual system (HVS) without reference image has been proposed to evaluate SAR image quality in this paper. Due to the comparability of the biological characteristics in human eyes with discrete wavelet transform (DWT), a subjective image quality evaluation model is set up. The effectiveness of the approach was validated by the computer simulations using the real airborne SAR images, as well as it shows high accordance with the actual image quality. The novel quality evaluation algorithm will provide the foundation in the future field of SAR subjective evaluation.