Abstract

A broad range of image processing applications require image databases during development and testing. Whilst some image databases have been assembled with specific applications in mind, others are in- tended for more general use, with image content that is purposefully not application-specific. General-purpose image databases are in frequent use in the development of new compression algorithms, including in the eval- uation of the efficacy of lossy compression techniques via statistical and human (perceptual) image quality assessment methods. The question of how the images featuring in standard image databases are selected is important, but is rarely quantitatively justified. In this article, we de- scribe the compilation of a new image database of high-definition color images. We present statistical analyzes both of the images that feature in the most widely used extant databases, and the new database that we have compiled, in order to evaluate how broad a range of the statistics measured each database spans.