Visual Pattern Image Coding by a Morphological Approach (RESEARCH NOTE)

This paper presents an improvement of the Visual Pattern image coding (VPIC) scheme presented by Chen and Bovik in [2] and [3]. The patterns in this improved scheme are defined by morphological operations and classified by absolute error minimization. The improved scheme identifies more uniform blocks and reduces the noise effect. Therefore, it improves the compression ratio and image quality is steel preserved. To achieve a better compression ratio, a hierarchical approach based on the merging of uniform blocks is also described. Experimental results show that the improved scheme provides higher compression ratios compared to ordinary VPIC.