用感知质量重定义信息压缩的极限,让压缩更符合人眼感受。
Rate-Distortion-Perception Theory: Redefining the Fundamental Limits of Information Representation

- 引入感知维度,用分布相似性衡量重建信号与原信号的视觉一致性。
- 提出统一优化方法计算率-失真-感知函数,适用于高斯源和多种感知约束。
- 适合研究感知驱动压缩、神经编码与信息论交叉的学者参考。
经典率失真(RD)理论长期为有损压缩设定基本极限,通过量化在给定失真约束下表示信源所需的最少比特数。然而,均方误差等常用失真度量难以捕捉感知质量或语义有效性,而这些在现代学习驱动应用中日益关键。率失真感知(RDP)理论将感知作为第三基本轴,通过源信号与重构信号间分布相似性进行量化,形成率失真感知函数(RDPF)。本教程系统梳理了感知感知有损压缩的编码原理,综述了不同随机性假设下的近期可达性结果,并提出了基于Blau和Michaeli定义的统一优化视角,用于计算离散与连续源在广泛感知约束(包括f散度、alpha散度、基于Wasserstein距离的度量)下的RDPF。重点讨论了交替最小化、牛顿法、凸优化等计算工具,以及高斯源与完美真实感情形下的解析可处理案例。不同于强调生成架构与AI赋能通信系统的综述,本文聚焦于刻画、计算与解释RDP极限所需的信息论与计算工具。最后,展望了信息论、神经压缩、鲁棒源编码与感知感知网络控制系统的交叉前沿方向。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Classical rate-distortion (RD) theory has long established the fundamental limits of lossy compression by quantifying the minimum number of bits required to represent a source under a prescribed distortion constraint. However, widely used distortion measures such as mean-squared error often fail to capture perceptual quality or semantic validity, which are increasingly central in modern learning-driven applications. Rate-distortion-perception (RDP) theory extends the RD framework by introducing perception as a third fundamental axis, quantified via distributional similarity between the source and reconstructed signals, leading to the rate-distortion-perception function (RDPF). This tutorial provides a structured overview of the coding principles underlying perception-aware lossy compression and surveys recent achievability results under different randomness assumptions. It then presents a unifying optimization viewpoint for computing the RDPF as defined by Blau and Michaeli, for both discrete and continuous sources under broad families of perceptual constraints, including f-divergences, alpha-divergences, and Wasserstein-based metrics. Special attention is given to computational tools such as alternating minimization schemes, Newton-based methods, and convex optimization formulations, as well as to analytically tractable cases such as Gaussian sources and the perfect-realism regime. Unlike recent broad surveys that emphasize generative architectures and AI-empowered communication systems, this tutorial focuses on the coding-theoretic and computational machinery needed to characterize, compute, and interpret the RDP limits. Finally, the tutorial outlines promising research directions at the intersection of information theory, neural compression, robust source coding, and perception-aware networked control systems.
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