A unified framework for physical print quality

Ahmed Eid; Brian Cooper; Ed Rippetoe

doi:10.1117/12.707186

29 January 2007 A unified framework for physical print quality

Ahmed Eid, Brian Cooper, Ed Rippetoe

Proceedings Volume 6494, Image Quality and System Performance IV; 64940C (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.707186
Event: Electronic Imaging 2007, 2007, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

In this paper we present a unified framework for physical print quality. This framework includes a design for a testbed, testing methodologies and quality measures of physical print characteristics. An automatic belt-fed flatbed scanning system is calibrated to acquire L* data for a wide range of flat field imagery. Testing methodologies based on wavelet pre-processing and spectral/statistical analysis are designed. We apply the proposed framework to three common printing artifacts: banding, jitter, and streaking. Since these artifacts are directional, wavelet based approaches are used to extract one artifact at a time and filter out other artifacts. Banding is characterized as a medium-to-low frequency, vertical periodic variation down the page. The same definition is applied to the jitter artifact, except that the jitter signal is characterized as a high-frequency signal above the banding frequency range. However, streaking is characterized as a horizontal aperiodic variation in the high-to-medium frequency range. Wavelets at different levels are applied to the input images in different directions to extract each artifact within specified frequency bands. Following wavelet reconstruction, images are converted into 1-D signals describing the artifact under concern. Accurate spectral analysis using a DFT with Blackman-Harris windowing technique is used to extract the power (strength) of periodic signals (banding and jitter). Since streaking is an aperiodic signal, a statistical measure is used to quantify the streaking strength. Experiments on 100 print samples scanned at 600 dpi from 10 different printers show high correlation (75% to 88%) between the ranking of these samples by the proposed metrologies and experts' visual ranking.

Citation Download Citation

Ahmed Eid, Brian Cooper, and Ed Rippetoe "A unified framework for physical print quality", Proc. SPIE 6494, Image Quality and System Performance IV, 64940C (29 January 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.707186

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