The eye tracking technique is one of the most advanced state-of-the-art physiological measurements to non-intrusively get human vision attention. Eye tracking technology is introduced and its application to the research of image quality perception is discussed. The first image quality assessment (IQA) database with eye tracking data

called XJTU_ETSS

is established for IQA research. Finally

heat map visualization is utilized on the XJTU_ETSS database to show the visual attention distribution differences within and between the original and distorted image groups. Single stimuli subject image assessment method is chosen on Tobii TX300 eye tracker with 60 Hz sampling rate to setup the database including 900 original and distorted images and 49 subjects. To visualize the eye tracking-based visual attention

methods as gaze plot and heat map are introduced in the paper. The distribution of values around a raw gaze data is accomplished by using an approximation to the Gaussian curve-a cubic hermite spline polynomial (cspline). According to the data of XJTU_ETSS

the count-based heat map

which shows the generality of the distribution of the visual attention of different subjects

is utilized to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the different distributions of visual attention on original and distorted images. First

the total number of interest areas on original images is larger and more concentrated than that on distorted images. Second

heat maps of the distorted images

such as awgn

gb and hfn have no obvious areas of interest (AOIs). Instead

the attention of the observers is spread all over the images because those kinds of distortions added useless information to destroy the original image. Third

heat maps of the distorted images

such as jp2k

jpeg and quan don't have as many AOIs as the original images. Because those kinds of distortions subtract information to compress the image

so that the detail of the original images are lost and there are no AOIs on the detail parts of such kinds of distorted images. According to the initial analysis on XJTU_ETSS

eye tracking techniques can intuitively reveal the features of human visual attention during original and distorted image reading. Such advantages can greatly contribute to the better visual attention-based subject image quality assessment algorithm in future and more comprehensive and thorough understanding of physiological and psychological mechanisms of human vision system.