# Mean Deviation Similarity Index: Efficient and Reliable Full-Reference Image Quality Evaluator

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.07433 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.07433/

## Key facts

- Cited by 32 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Aug 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [PyTorch Image Quality: Metrics for Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14818/) (2022)
- [Black-Box Testing of Deep Neural Networks Through Test Case Diversity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12591/) (2021)
- [A Hitchhiker's Guide to Structural Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06354/) (2021)
- [A study on the adequacy of common IQA measures for medical images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19224/) (2024)
- [NeRF-NQA: No-Reference Quality Assessment for Scenes Generated by NeRF and Neural View Synthesis Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08029/) (2024)
- [Exploring Adversarial Robustness of Vision Transformers in the Spectral Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09602/) (2022)
- [Model Inversion Attacks Through Target-Specific Conditional Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11424/) (2024)
- [ST360IQ: No-Reference Omnidirectional Image Quality Assessment with Spherical Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06907/) (2023)
- [How Will It Drape Like? Capturing Fabric Mechanics from Depth Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06704/) (2023)
- [NVS-SQA: Exploring Self-Supervised Quality Representation Learning for Neurally Synthesized Scenes without References](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06488/) (2025)
- [Scale Guided Hypernetwork for Blind Super-Resolution Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02398/) (2023)
- [VTAMIQ: Transformers for Attention Modulated Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01655/) (2021)
- [Image Quality Assessment for Magnetic Resonance Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07809/) (2022)
- [D4: Text-guided diffusion model-based domain adaptive data augmentation for vineyard shoot detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04060/) (2024)
- [Parameter choices in HaarPSI for IQA with medical images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24098/) (2024)
- [Evaluating quality metrics through the lenses of psychophysical measurements of low-level vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16264/) (2025)
- [Quality Map Fusion for Adversarial Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.12338/) (2021)
- [Multi-Scale Features and Parallel Transformers Based Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09779/) (2022)
- [QMRNet: Quality Metric Regression for EO Image Quality Assessment and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06618/) (2022)
- [Adapting Pretrained Networks for Image Quality Assessment on High Dynamic Range Displays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00670/) (2024)
- [AID-AppEAL: Automatic Image Dataset and Algorithm for Content Appeal Enhancement and Assessment Labeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05546/) (2024)
- [MobileMEF: Fast and Efficient Method for Multi-Exposure Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07932/) (2024)
- [Electromyography-Informed Facial Expression Reconstruction for Physiological-Based Synthesis and Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09556/) (2025)
- [CGVQM+D: Computer Graphics Video Quality Metric and Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11546/) (2025)
- [Design of Low-Artifact Interpolation Kernels by Means of Computer Algebra](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04104/) (2021)
- [Deep Superpixel-based Network for Blind Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06564/) (2021)
- [Enhancing Content Representation for AR Image Quality Assessment Using Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06003/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised Multi-Clustering and Decision-Making Strategies for 4D-STEM Orientation Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06699/) (2025)
- [PhotIQA: A photoacoustic image data set with image quality ratings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03478/) (2025)
- [A new Image Similarity Metric for a Perceptual and Transparent Geometric and Chromatic Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19680/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Applications of perceptual image quality assessment (IQA) in image and video processing, such as image acquisition, image compression, image restoration and multimedia communication, have led to the development of many IQA metrics. In this paper, a reliable full reference IQA model is proposed that utilize gradient similarity (GS), chromaticity similarity (CS), and deviation pooling (DP). By considering the shortcomings of the commonly used GS to model human visual system (HVS), a new GS is proposed through a fusion technique that is more likely to follow HVS. We propose an efficient and effective formulation to calculate the joint similarity map of two chromatic channels for the purpose of measuring color changes. In comparison with a commonly used formulation in the literature, the proposed CS map is shown to be more efficient and provide comparable or better quality predictions. Motivated by a recent work that utilizes the standard deviation pooling, a general formulation of the DP is presented in this paper and used to compute a final score from the proposed GS and CS maps. This proposed formulation of DP benefits from the Minkowski pooling and a proposed power pooling as well. The experimental results on six datasets of natural images, a synthetic dataset, and a digitally retouched dataset show that the proposed index provides comparable or better quality predictions than the most recent and competing state-of-the-art IQA metrics in the literature, it is reliable and has low complexity. The MATLAB source code of the proposed metric is available at https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/59809.