Links
Bror Hultgren (ImagIntegration.com), an imaging scientist with 27 years experience at Polaroid, has developed algorithms and software that relates image quality factors (especially MTF, noise spectrum, white balance, and memory colors) to perceived image quality. Bror is available for consulting.
Direct Digital Image Capture of Cultural Heritage from RIT is a gold mine of information. Links to a number of reports on image quality targeted at museums and cultural institutions. The 78-page Final Project Report by Berns, Frey, Rosen, Smoyer and Taplin, July 2005, is probably the best summary unless you have time for Erin P (Murphy) Smoyer's 345 page Master's thesis (about twice the length of the average Ph.D. thesis).
The Research Library Group (RLG) has published an excellent series of articles, Guides to Quality in Visual Resource Imaging (2000). These articles are the predecessors to the above-mentioned RIT Direct Digital Image Capture work.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has a library of technical papers (the EBU Tech 3000 series), some related to TV image quality, for example, T3249, Measurement and Analysis of the Performance of Film and Television Camera Lenses (1995), and T3281, Methods for the Measurement of Characteristics of CCD Cameras (1995).
Volker Gilbert has written an excellent French language description of Imatest. (PDF version)
SMIA (Standard Mobile Imaging Architecture), a consortium founded by Nokia and STMicroelectronics, has published a Camera Characterization Specification for image quality measurements in camera phones. To obtain the spec you must join SMIA. It's free; all you need to do is answer a brief questionnaire.
Paul van Walree has an excellent page on Optics, covering several sources of degradation.
The University of Texas Laboratory for Image & Video Engineering is doing some interesting work on image and video quality assessment, which approaches the problem using information theory, natural scene statistics, wavelets, etc. Challenging material!
Details of many Imatest algorithms are included in Appendix C, Video Acquisition Measurement Methods (pp. 91-125), of the Public Safety SoR (Statement of Requirements) volume II v 1.0, released by SAFECOM, prepared by ITS (a division of NTIA, U.S. Department of Commerce). No credit is given, but the style and illustrations will be recognizable.
