Relationship of Just Noticeable Difference (JND) in Black Level and White Level With Image Content

In this paper, we introduce a series of perception experiments to measure the just noticeable difference (JND) in black level (BL) and white level (WL) for natural image content under common viewing conditions. Based on these experiments the JND in BL is determined for 13 images and the JND in WL for 18 images. In both cases the JND is found to be image content dependent. To model this image content dependency, we evaluated various luminance characteristics of the whole image and of the main area of focus (AF) of the image. Regression analysis revealed that both JNDs are largely determined by the overall (average) luminance of the image weighted with the average luminance of the AF. The relationship of these two luminance contributions to the JND of BL and WL is proven to be stable for most types of image content.