TY - GEN
T1 - Assessing subjective perception of audio quality by measuring the information flow on the brain-response channel
AU - Mehta, Ketan
AU - Kliewer, Jörg
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - In this paper, we use mutual information (MI) as a measure to quantify the subjective perception of audio quality by directly measuring the brainwave responses of human subjects using a high resolution electro-encephalogram (EEG). Specifically, we propose an information theoretic model to interpret the entire 'transmission chain' comprising stimulus generation, brain processing by the human subject, and EEG measurements as a nonlinear, time-varying communication channel with memory. In the conducted experiment, subjects were presented with audio whose quality varies between two quality levels. The recorded EEG measurements can be modeled as a multidimensional Gaussian mixture model (GMM). In order to make the computation of the MI feasible, we present a novel approximation technique for the differential entropy of the multidimensional GMM. We find the proposed information theoretic approach to be successful in quantifying audio quality perception, with the results being consistent across different subjects and distortion types.
AB - In this paper, we use mutual information (MI) as a measure to quantify the subjective perception of audio quality by directly measuring the brainwave responses of human subjects using a high resolution electro-encephalogram (EEG). Specifically, we propose an information theoretic model to interpret the entire 'transmission chain' comprising stimulus generation, brain processing by the human subject, and EEG measurements as a nonlinear, time-varying communication channel with memory. In the conducted experiment, subjects were presented with audio whose quality varies between two quality levels. The recorded EEG measurements can be modeled as a multidimensional Gaussian mixture model (GMM). In order to make the computation of the MI feasible, we present a novel approximation technique for the differential entropy of the multidimensional GMM. We find the proposed information theoretic approach to be successful in quantifying audio quality perception, with the results being consistent across different subjects and distortion types.
KW - Gaussian mixture model (GMM)
KW - audio quality
KW - electro-encephalography (EEG)
KW - mutual information
KW - perception
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84905284208&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84905284208&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICASSP.2014.6854732
DO - 10.1109/ICASSP.2014.6854732
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84905284208
SN - 9781479928927
T3 - ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings
SP - 5884
EP - 5888
BT - 2014 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2014
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2014 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2014
Y2 - 4 May 2014 through 9 May 2014
ER -