The Price of Labeling Only Severity Endpoints in Image-Quality Calibration

Authors

  • Vincent Knight Author
  • Arthur Lawson Author
  • Gavin Bell Author

Abstract

Could an image-quality study label only the mildest and strongest distortion levels? In KADID-10k metadata, endpoint-only linear curves used 3,250 training scores, compared with 8,125 for curves observing all five levels. On middle levels from sixteen held-out reference images, their mean absolute error was 0.484 rather than 0.341. The paired difference was 0.143 score units, with a reference-level interval of 0.131 to 0.155. Allowing quadratic curvature with the full label set reduced error further to 0.299. This small calibration exercise separates label availability from curve flexibility; it does not measure the accuracy or cost of a trained visual-quality network.

Exploratory calibration study based on public score metadata. Draft interpretation and publication decisions require accountable human review.

Original publication: October 24, 2026.

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Published

2026-10-24

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Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Inaugural Issue

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Articles

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Copyright (c) 2026 Vincent Knight, Arthur Lawson, Gavin Bell

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.