Rafał Mantiuk *

Projects

This is a selection of the major projects. A complete list of publications can be found here.

Project imageThe effect of display capabilities on the gloss consistency between real and virtual objects

We reproduce gloss on our ultra-realistic HDR 3D display so that it appears identical to the gloss of real objects seen side by side. Our observation is that the dynamic range, absolute luminance and tone-curve are the factors that influence gloss perception the most.

Project imageNeural Partitioning Pyramids for Denoising Monte Carlo Renderings

Spatiotemporal denoising for path tracing relies on a trained multi-scale decomposition (pyramid), which can better preserve details and avoid artifacts of previous methods.

Project imageRobust estimation of exposure ratios in multi-exposure image stacks

Inaccurate information on exposure times result in banding artifacts when merging a stack of multiple exposures into an HDR image. We show how the exposure times can be robustly estimated from an exposure stack while accounting for camera noise and pixel misalignment.

Project imagestelaCSF - A Unified Model of Contrast Sensitivity as the Function of Spatio-Temporal Frequency, Eccentricity, Luminance and Area

A contrast sensitivity function of the human visual system has been modeled as the function of spatial and temporal frequency, eccentricity, luminance, and area (stelaCSF). The same model explains the data from 11 contrast sensitivity datasets from the literature and enables applications in foveated rendering, flicker visibility, and other areas.

Project imageDark Stereo: Improving Depth Perception Under Low Luminance

Low display brightness, which is often desirable in VR and stereo applications, decreases the precision of binocular depth cues. We measure and model this effect and then show how it can be compensated with a simple, real-time, image-space technique to produce preferable and more 3D rendering for low-luminance VR headsets.

Project imageComparison of Single-image HDR Reconstruction Methods — The Caveats of Quality Assessment

Existing protocols for evaluating single-image HDR reconstruction methods are unreliable because of large color and tone differences. We demonstrate that the accuracy of metrics can be improved by correcting for camera-response-curve inversion errors. Still, the metrics can detect only substantial differences, and conducting a controlled experiment is preferable.

Project imagePerceptual Model for Adaptive Local Shading and Refresh Rate

Variable Shading Rate (VRS) and refresh rate are optimized using a perceptual motion-quality model to maximize rendering quality for a given rendering budget.

Project imageReproducing Reality with a High-Dynamic-Range Multi-Focal Stereo Display

A novel high-dynamic-range multi-focal stereo display reproduces 3D objects with high fidelity so that they are confused with real 3D objects.

Project imageFovVideoVDP - An image/video quality metric for regular and foveated viewing

FovVideoVDP is an image and video quality metric that is in particular intended for testing the performance of foveated rendering methods. The metric accounts for many aspects of low-level vision, such as luminance, contrast masking, spatio-temporal contrast sensitivity and reduced sensitivity outside the foveal region.

Project imageTransformation Consistency Regularization - A Semi Supervised Paradigm for Image to Image Translation

We can train image-to-image networks in a semi-supervised manner with 50% or less of paired data, or we can improve performance using using large quantities of unpaired data. The method works with multiple tasks, including single-image super-resolution, denoising, semantic segmentation, colourization and others.

Project imageA perceptual model of motion quality for rendering with adaptive refresh-rate and resolution

Is it better to render at 4K or 144Hz? The quality of motion depends on the velocity, the type of eye motion, viewing distance and other factors. We model the influence of all those factors on the perceived quality of motion and use such a model to adaptively select refresh-rate and resolution for rendering.

Project imageSpatio-chromatic conteast sensitivity function for high dynamic range

A luminance and colour contrast sensitivity function has been measured and modelled in the range of luminance from 0.001 cd/m^2 to 10,000 cd/m^2. The new function can predict detection thresholds for three colour directions, a range of frequencies, luminance levels and stimulus sizes.

Project imageDiCE: Dichoptic Contrast Enhancement for VR and Stereo Displays

The perceived contrast in VR/AR or stereoscopic displays is enhanced by showing a slightly modified image to each eye. The effect takes advantage of the binocular fusion mechanism, which shows bias toward the eye that can see a higher contrast.

Project imageFrom pairwise comparisons and rating to a unified quality scale

The method for scaling together the results of rating and pairwise comparison experiments into a unified quality scal and the meaning units of Just Objectionable Differences. The method can be used to combine together existing datasets or to design experiments in which both protocols are combined.

Project imageSingle-frame Regularization for Temporally Stable CNNs

We make generative CNNs produce temporarily coherent video by adding regularization terms to the loss function. The regularization facilitates learning geometric transformations, which should affect the output frame in the same way as the input frame.

Project imagePredicting visible image differences under varying display brightness and viewing distance

Machine-learning-based metric for predicting visible differences between a pair of images. The metric can account for viewing distance and display brightness.

Project imageTemporal Resolution Multiplexing: Exploiting the limitations of spatio-temporal vision for more efficient VR rendering

Every second frame of a high-frame animation is rendered at a lower resolution, reducing the number of rendered and transmitted pixels by about 40%. The high quality animation is reconstructed by exploiting the limitations of human spatio-temporal vision.

Project imageDataset and metrics for predicting local visible differences

Visibility of artifacts is marked by a number of observers to create a dataset of local differences. The dataset is then used to retrain existing visibility metrics, such as HDR-VDP-2, and to train a new CNN-based metric.

Project imagePsychometric scaling of TID2013 dataset

The largest image quality dataset, TID2013, is rescaled to improve the quality scores. Better quality estimates are obtained using a more rigorous observer model (Thurstone's Case V) and with additional cross-content and with-reference measurements.

Project imageHDR image reconstruction from a single exposure using deep CNNs

Saturated pixels are reconstructed from a single low-dynamic range exposure with the help of a deep convolutional neural network.

Project imageTowards a quality metric for dense light fields

We investigate whether 2D quality metrics can predict the distortions that can be found in light field applications.

Project imageReview of HDR video tone-mapping

The report contains a review of recent video tone mapping operators, oulining the most important trends and characteristics of the proposed methods.

Project imageLuma HDRv: High dynamic range video codec

The Luma HDRv is a video codec based on VP9, which uses a perceptually motivated method to encode high dynamic range (HDR) video. Source code avauilable.

Project imageA model of local adaptation

A model predicting the adapting luminance in complex scenes.

Project imageReal-time noise-aware tone mapping

Video tone mapping that controls the visibility of the noise, adapts to display and viewing environment, minimizes contrast distortions, preserves or enhances image details, and can be run in real-time without preprocessing.

Project imageEncoding for HDR pixels

Psychophysical evaluation of several encoding schemes for high dynamic range pixel values.

Project imageDepth from HDR

We investigate what is the likely cause of enhanced appearance on 3D-ness on HDR displays.

Project imageSimulating and compensating changes in appearance between day and night vision

The method that can reproduce the appearance of night scenes on bright displays or compensate for night vision on dark displays.

Project imageLearning to predict localized distortions in rendered images

A new data-driven full-reference image quality metric intended for detecting rendering artefacts and their location in an image. The metric utilises a large number of features from quality metrics (SSIM, HDR-VDP-2), computer vision (HOG, BOW) and statistics.

Project imageEvaluation of tone mapping for HDR-video

Eleven tone mapping operators are evaluated and compared to investigate the major challenges and problems in video tone mapping.

Project imageMonocular depth cues on an HDR display

A number of monocular depth cues are compared in a subjective experiment to evaluate the accuracy of intuitive depth ordering. Contrast and brightness on an HDR display were found to be one of the most effective depth cues when no other depth cues are available.

Project imageGaze-driven object tracking

To efficiently deploy eye-tracking within 3D graphics applications, we present a new probabilistic method that predicts the patterns of user’s eye fixations in animated 3D scenes from noisy eye-tracker data.

Project imageWeaknesses of image quality metrics

The new per-pixel image quality dataset with computer graphics artifacts shows disapointing performance of both simple (PSNR, MSE, sCIE-Lab) and advanced (SSIM, MS-SSIM, HDR-VDP-2) quality metrics.

Project imageHDR display

Unlike standard LCD or Plasma displays, a high dynamic range (HDR) display is capable of showing images of very high contrast (up to 250,000:1) and peak brightness (up to 2,400 cd/m^2). As a result, the images and video shown on such as display look very realistic and appealing.

Project imageHDR-VDP-2: A calibrated visual metric for visibility and quality predictions in all luminance conditions

A metric for predicting visible differences (discrimination) and image quality (mean-opinion-score) in high dynamic range images. The metric is carefully calibrated and extensively tested against actual experimental data, ensuring the highest possible accuracy.

Project imageGlare encoding of high dynamic range images

HDR images are captured in a single exposure with standard cameras by encoding information about the saturated pixels in a glare. The glare is produced by a cross-screen (star) filter, making it amenable to tomographic reconstruction.

Project imageBlur-aware image downsizing

Digital viewfinder in cameras does not show depth-of-field, lack of sharpness or motion blur, which is normally visible in a full-size image. Based on blur-matching experimental data, the algorithm produces lower resolution images while preserving apperent blur.

Project imageVisualizing High Dynamic Range Images in a Web Browser

A method for displaying HDR images with exposure control in a web browser. The project page includes a toolkit for generating web pages with HDR images.

Project imageColor correction in tone mapping

Color distortions due to tone-mapping are corrected by adjusting image color saturation. A model of color adjustment is built based on the data from an appearance-matching experiment.

Project imageDisplay adaptive tone-mapping

A tone-mapping algorithm that is controlled by a super-threshold visual metric. The solution takes into account display limitations, such as brightness, black level, and reflected ambient light.

Project imageDynamic Range Independent Image Quality Assessment

A visual metric that is mostly invariant to contrast and tone-scale manipulations. It can detect loss of visible contrast, amplification of invisible contrast and contrast reversal.

Project imageEnhancement of Bright Video Features for High Dynamic Range Display

A semi-automatic method for classification of reflective and emissive objects in video, followed by brightness enhancement for display on high dynamic range displays.

Project imageModeling a Generic Tone-Mapping Operator

A generic model of a local tone-mapping operator is fit to a pair of LDR and HDR images. The model is applied for backward compatible HDR image compression, analysis of tone-mapping operators and synthesis of new operators from existing ones.

Project imageBrightness of Glare Illusion

The perceived brightness of the glare illusion is measured in a brightness matching experiment. A simple Gaussian convolution is shown to produce similar brightness boost as a physically correct PSF model of the eye optics.

For older projects visit the MPI HDR Projects web page or go to the publication list and click on the 'project page' link.