A family of stereoscopic image compression algorithms using wavelet transforms

With the standardization of JPEG-2000, wavelet-based image and video compression technologies are gradually replacing the popular DCT-based methods. In parallel to this, recent developments in autostereoscopic display technology is now threatening to revolutionize the way in which consumers are used to enjoying the traditional 2-D display based electronic media such as television, computer and movies. However, due to the two-fold bandwidth/storage space requirement of stereoscopic imaging, an essential requirement of a stereo imaging system is efficient data compression. In this thesis, seven wavelet-based stereo image compression algorithms are proposed, to take advantage of the higher data compaction capability and better flexibility of wavelets. [Continues.

A family of stereoscopic image compression algorithms using wavelet transforms

With the standardization of JPEG-2000, wavelet-based image and video compression technologies are gradually replacing the popular DCT-based methods. In parallel to this, recent developments in autostereoscopic display technology is now threatening to revolutionize the way in which consumers are used to enjoying the traditional 2D display based electronic media such as television, computer and movies. However, due to the two-fold bandwidth/storage space requirement of stereoscopic imaging, an essential requirement of a stereo imaging system is efficient data compression. In this thesis, seven wavelet-based stereo image compression algorithms are proposed, to take advantage of the higher data compaction capability and better flexibility of wavelets. In the proposed CODEC I, block-based disparity estimation/compensation (DE/DC) is performed in pixel domain. However, this results in an inefficiency when DWT is applied on the whole predictive error image that results from the DE process. This is because of the existence of artificial block boundaries between error blocks in the predictive error image. To overcome this problem, in the remaining proposed CODECs, DE/DC is performed in the wavelet domain. Due to the multiresolution nature of the wavelet domain, two methods of disparity estimation and compensation have been proposed. The first method is performing DEJDC in each subband of the lowest/coarsest resolution level and then propagating the disparity vectors obtained to the corresponding subbands of higher/finer resolution. Note that DE is not performed in every subband due to the high overhead bits that could be required for the coding of disparity vectors of all subbands. This method is being used in CODEC II. In the second method, DEJDC is performed m the wavelet-block domain. This enables disparity estimation to be performed m all subbands simultaneously without increasing the overhead bits required for the coding disparity vectors. This method is used by CODEC III. However, performing disparity estimation/compensation in all subbands would result in a significant improvement of CODEC III. To further improve the performance of CODEC ill, pioneering wavelet-block search technique is implemented in CODEC IV. The pioneering wavelet-block search technique enables the right/predicted image to be reconstructed at the decoder end without the need of transmitting the disparity vectors. In proposed CODEC V, pioneering block search is performed in all subbands of DWT decomposition which results in an improvement of its performance. Further, the CODEC IV and V are able to perform at very low bit rates(< 0.15 bpp). In CODEC VI and CODEC VII, Overlapped Block Disparity Compensation (OBDC) is used with & without the need of coding disparity vector. Our experiment results showed that no significant coding gains could be obtained for these CODECs over CODEC IV & V. All proposed CODECs m this thesis are wavelet-based stereo image coding algorithms that maximise the flexibility and benefits offered by wavelet transform technology when applied to stereo imaging. In addition the use of a baseline-JPEG coding architecture would enable the easy adaptation of the proposed algorithms within systems originally built for DCT-based coding. This is an important feature that would be useful during an era where DCT-based technology is only slowly being phased out to give way for DWT based compression technology. In addition, this thesis proposed a stereo image coding algorithm that uses JPEG-2000 technology as the basic compression engine. The proposed CODEC, named RASTER is a rate scalable stereo image CODEC that has a unique ability to preserve the image quality at binocular depth boundaries, which is an important requirement in the design of stereo image CODEC. The experimental results have shown that the proposed CODEC is able to achieve PSNR gains of up to 3.7 dB as compared to directly transmitting the right frame using JPEG-2000

State-of-the-Art and Trends in Scalable Video Compression with Wavelet Based Approaches

3noScalable Video Coding (SVC) differs form traditional single point approaches mainly because it allows to encode in a unique bit stream several working points corresponding to different quality, picture size and frame rate. This work describes the current state-of-the-art in SVC, focusing on wavelet based motion-compensated approaches (WSVC). It reviews individual components that have been designed to address the problem over the years and how such components are typically combined to achieve meaningful WSVC architectures. Coding schemes which mainly differ from the space-time order in which the wavelet transforms operate are here compared, discussing strengths and weaknesses of the resulting implementations. An evaluation of the achievable coding performances is provided considering the reference architectures studied and developed by ISO/MPEG in its exploration on WSVC. The paper also attempts to draw a list of major differences between wavelet based solutions and the SVC standard jointly targeted by ITU and ISO/MPEG. A major emphasis is devoted to a promising WSVC solution, named STP-tool, which presents architectural similarities with respect to the SVC standard. The paper ends drawing some evolution trends for WSVC systems and giving insights on video coding applications which could benefit by a wavelet based approach.partially_openpartially_openADAMI N; SIGNORONI. A; R. LEONARDIAdami, Nicola; Signoroni, Alberto; Leonardi, Riccard

Super Resolution of Wavelet-Encoded Images and Videos

In this dissertation, we address the multiframe super resolution reconstruction problem for wavelet-encoded images and videos. The goal of multiframe super resolution is to obtain one or more high resolution images by fusing a sequence of degraded or aliased low resolution images of the same scene. Since the low resolution images may be unaligned, a registration step is required before super resolution reconstruction. Therefore, we first explore in-band (i.e. in the wavelet-domain) image registration; then, investigate super resolution. Our motivation for analyzing the image registration and super resolution problems in the wavelet domain is the growing trend in wavelet-encoded imaging, and wavelet-encoding for image/video compression. Due to drawbacks of widely used discrete cosine transform in image and video compression, a considerable amount of literature is devoted to wavelet-based methods. However, since wavelets are shift-variant, existing methods cannot utilize wavelet subbands efficiently. In order to overcome this drawback, we establish and explore the direct relationship between the subbands under a translational shift, for image registration and super resolution. We then employ our devised in-band methodology, in a motion compensated video compression framework, to demonstrate the effective usage of wavelet subbands. Super resolution can also be used as a post-processing step in video compression in order to decrease the size of the video files to be compressed, with downsampling added as a pre-processing step. Therefore, we present a video compression scheme that utilizes super resolution to reconstruct the high frequency information lost during downsampling. In addition, super resolution is a crucial post-processing step for satellite imagery, due to the fact that it is hard to update imaging devices after a satellite is launched. Thus, we also demonstrate the usage of our devised methods in enhancing resolution of pansharpened multispectral images

High performance shift invariant motion estimation and compensation in wavelet domain video compression

The contributions of this dissertation are in the development of two new interrelated approaches to video data compression: 1) A level-refined motion estimation and subband compensation method for the effective motion estimation and motion compensation. 2) A shift-invariant sub-decimation decomposition method in order to overcome the deficiency of the decimation process in estimating motion due to its shift-invariant property of wavelet transform. The enormous data generated by digital videos call for an intense need of efficient video compression techniques to conserve storage space and minimize bandwidth utilization. The main idea of video compression is to reduce the interpixel redundancies inside and between the video frames by applying motion estimation and motion compensation (MEMC) in combination with spatial transform coding. To locate the global minimum of the matching criterion function reasonably, hierarchical motion estimation by coarse to fine resolution refinements using discrete wavelet transform is applied due to its intrinsic multiresolution and scalability natures

Visual perception based bit allocation for low bitrate video coding

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-47).by Rajesh Suryadevara.M.S

Block-classified bidirectional motion compensation scheme for wavelet-decomposed digital video

In this paper the authors introduce a block-classified bidirectional motion compensation scheme for the previously developed wavelet-based video codec, where multiresolution motion estimation is performed in the wavelet domain. The frame classification structure described in this paper is similar to that used in the MPEG standard. Specifically, the I-frames are intraframe coded, the P-frames are interpolated from a previous I- or a P-frame, and the B-frames are bidirectional interpolated frames. They apply this frame classification structure to the wavelet domain with variable block sizes and multiresolution representation. They use a symmetric bidirectional scheme for the B-frames and classify the motion blocks as intraframe, compensated either from the preceding or the following frame, or bidirectional (i.e., compensated based on which type yields the minimum energy). They also introduce the concept of F-frames, which are analogous to P-frames but are predicted from the following frame only. This improves the overall quality of the reconstruction in a group of pictures (GOP) but at the expense of extra buffering. They also study the effect of quantization of the I-frames on the reconstruction of a GOP, and they provide intuitive explanation for the results. In addition, the authors study a variety of wavelet filter-banks to be used in a multiresolution motion-compensated hierarchical video codec

A DWT based perceptual video coding framework: concepts, issues and techniques

The work in this thesis explore the DWT based video coding by the introduction of a novel DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) / MC (Motion Compensation) / DPCM (Differential Pulse Code Modulation) video coding framework, which adopts the EBCOT as the coding engine for both the intra- and the inter-frame coder. The adaptive switching mechanism between the frame/field coding modes is investigated for this coding framework. The Low-Band-Shift (LBS) is employed for the MC in the DWT domain. The LBS based MC is proven to provide consistent improvement on the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of the coded video over the simple Wavelet Tree (WT) based MC. The Adaptive Arithmetic Coding (AAC) is adopted to code the motion information. The context set of the Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding (ABAC) for the inter-frame data is redesigned based on the statistical analysis. To further improve the perceived picture quality, a Perceptual Distortion Measure (PDM) based on human vision model is used for the EBCOT of the intra-frame coder. A visibility assessment of the quantization error of various subbands in the DWT domain is performed through subjective tests. In summary, all these findings have solved the issues originated from the proposed perceptual video coding framework. They include: a working DWT/MC/DPCM video coding framework with superior coding efficiency on sequences with translational or head-shoulder motion; an adaptive switching mechanism between frame and field coding mode; an effective LBS based MC scheme in the DWT domain; a methodology of the context design for entropy coding of the inter-frame data; a PDM which replaces the MSE inside the EBCOT coding engine for the intra-frame coder, which provides improvement on the perceived quality of intra-frames; a visibility assessment to the quantization errors in the DWT domain

Efficient compression of motion compensated residuals

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