Abstract
Evaluation of Image Quality Assessment (IQA) models has long been dominated by global correlation metrics, such as Pearson Linear Correlation Coefficient (PLCC) and Spearman Rank-Order Correlation Coefficient (SRCC). While widely adopted, these metrics reduce performance to a single scalar, failing to capture how ranking consistency varies across the local quality spectrum. For example, two IQA models may achieve identical SRCC values, yet one ranks high-quality images (related to high Mean Opinion Score, MOS) more reliably, while the other better discriminates image pairs with small quality/MOS differences (related to $|\Delta$|ΔMOS $|$|). Such complementary behaviors are invisible under global metrics. Moreover, SRCC and PLCC are sensitive to test-sample quality distributions, yielding unstable comparisons across test sets. To address these limitations, we propose Granularity-Modulated Correlation (GMC), which provides a structured, fine-grained analysis of IQA performance. GMC includes: (1) a Granularity Modulator that applies Gaussian-weighted correlations conditioned on absolute MOS values and pairwise MOS differences ($|\Delta$|Δ MOS$|$|) to examine local performance variations, and (2) a Distribution Regulator that regularizes correlations to mitigate biases from non-uniform quality distributions. The resulting correlation surface maps correlation values as a joint function of MOS and $|\Delta$|ΔMOS$|$|, providing a 3D representation of IQA performance. Experiments on standard benchmarks show that GMC reveals performance characteristics invisible to scalar metrics, offering a more informative and reliable paradigm for analyzing, comparing, and deploying IQA models.