Perceptual Quality Assessment for Point Clouds : A Survey

Abstract: A point cloud is considered a promising 3D representation that has achieved wide applications in several fields. However, quality degradation inevitably occurs during its acquisition and generation, communication and transmission, and rendering and display. Therefore, how to accurately perceive the visual quality of point clouds is a meaningful topic. In this survey, we first introduce the point cloud to emphasize the importance of point cloud quality assessment (PCQA). A review of subjective PCQA is followed, including common point cloud distortions, subjective experimental setups and subjective databases. Then we review and compare objective PCQA methods in terms of model-based and projection-based. Finally, we provide evaluation criteria for objective PCQA methods and compare the performances of various methods across multiple databases. This survey provides an overview of classical methods and recent advances in PCQA.

Keywords: point cloud quality assessment; PCQA databases; subjective quality assessment; objective quality assessment