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

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 fast two-stage OMP algorithm for coding stereo image residuals

Centre for Multimedia Signal Processing, Department of Electronic and Information EngineeringRefereed conference paper2003-2004 > Academic research: refereed > Refereed conference paperVersion of RecordPublishe

Pioneering block based stereo image CODEC in wavelet domain

In this paper we propose the wavelet domain implementation of our original pioneering block based stereo image compression algorithm and compare its performance with traditional, DCT based and state-of-the art, DWT based stereo image compression algorithms. Due to the special requirements of the pioneering block based CODEC and the properties of DWT based multi-resolution decomposition, the implementation of the original algorithm in the wavelet domain is not straightforward and thus provides knowledge and understanding of significant novelty. Experiments were performed on a set of eight stereo image pairs representing, natural, synthetic, in-door and out-door images. We show that for the same bit rates, objective quality gains of up to 5 dB (PSNR) are obtained as compared to the benchmark algorithms. One significant property of the proposed CODEC is its ability to produce reconstructed right images of up to 25dB at right image bit rates as low as 0. 1 bpp. Significant gains in subjective image quality are also obtained as compared to benchmark methods

Vector Lifting Schemes for Stereo Image Coding

International audienceMany research efforts have been devoted to the improvement of stereo image coding techniques for storage or transmission. In this paper, we are mainly interested in lossyto- lossless coding schemes for stereo images allowing progressive reconstruction. The most commonly used approaches for stereo compression are based on disparity compensation techniques. The basic principle involved in this technique first consists of estimating the disparity map. Then, one image is considered as a reference and the other is predicted in order to generate a residual image. In this work, we propose a novel approach, based on Vector Lifting Schemes (VLS), which offers the advantage of generating two compact multiresolution representations of the left and the right views. We present two versions of this new scheme. A theoretical analysis of the performance of the considered VLS is also conducted. Experimental results indicate a significant improvement using the proposed structures compared with conventional methods

Variable Block Size Motion Compensation In The Redundant Wavelet Domain

Video is one of the most powerful forms of multimedia because of the extensive information it delivers. Video sequences are highly correlated both temporally and spatially, a fact which makes the compression of video possible. Modern video systems employ motion estimation and motion compensation (ME/MC) to de-correlate a video sequence temporally. ME/MC forms a prediction of the current frame using the frames which have been already encoded. Consequently, one needs to transmit the corresponding residual image instead of the original frame, as well as a set of motion vectors which describe the scene motion as observed at the encoder. The redundant wavelet transform (RDWT) provides several advantages over the conventional wavelet transform (DWT). The RDWT overcomes the shift invariant problem in DWT. Moreover, RDWT retains all the phase information of wavelet coefficients and provides multiple prediction possibilities for ME/MC in wavelet domain. The general idea of variable size block motion compensation (VSBMC) technique is to partition a frame in such a way that regions with uniform translational motions are divided into larger blocks while those containing complicated motions into smaller blocks, leading to an adaptive distribution of motion vectors (MV) across the frame. The research proposed new adaptive partitioning schemes and decision criteria in RDWT that utilize more effectively the motion content of a frame in terms of various block sizes. The research also proposed a selective subpixel accuracy algorithm for the motion vector using a multiband approach. The selective subpixel accuracy reduces the computations produced by the conventional subpixel algorithm while maintaining the same accuracy. In addition, the method of overlapped block motion compensation (OBMC) is used to reduce blocking artifacts. Finally, the research extends the applications of the proposed VSBMC to the 3D video sequences. The experimental results obtained here have shown that VSBMC in the RDWT domain can be a powerful tool for video compression

Motion compensation and very low bit rate video coding

Recently, many activities of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Standard Organization (ISO) are leading to define new standards for very low bit-rate video coding, such as H.263 and MPEG-4 after successful applications of the international standards H.261 and MPEG-1/2 for video coding above 64kbps. However, at very low bit-rate the classic block matching based DCT video coding scheme suffers seriously from blocking artifacts which degrade the quality of reconstructed video frames considerably. To solve this problem, a new technique in which motion compensation is based on dense motion field is presented in this dissertation. Four efficient new video coding algorithms based on this new technique for very low bit-rate are proposed. (1) After studying model-based video coding algorithms, we propose an optical flow based video coding algorithm with thresh-olding techniques. A statistic model is established for distribution of intensity difference between two successive frames, and four thresholds are used to control the bit-rate and the quality of reconstructed frames. It outperforms the typical model-based techniques in terms of complexity and quality of reconstructed frames. (2) An efficient algorithm using DCT coded optical flow. It is found that dense motion fields can be modeled as the first order auto-regressive model, and efficiently compressed with DCT technique, hence achieving very low bit-rate and higher visual quality than the H.263/TMN5. (3) A region-based discrete wavelet transform video coding algorithm. This algorithm implements dense motion field and regions are segmented according to their content significance. The DWT is applied to residual images region by region, and bits are adaptively allocated to regions. It improves the visual quality and PSNR of significant regions while maintaining low bit-rate. (4) A segmentation-based video coding algorithm for stereo sequence. A correlation-feedback algorithm with Kalman filter is utilized to improve the accuracy of optical flow fields. Three criteria, which are associated with 3-D information, 2-D connectivity and motion vector fields, respectively, are defined for object segmentation. A chain code is utilized to code the shapes of the segmented objects. it can achieve very high compression ratio up to several thousands

Rate-distortion optimized geometrical image processing

Since geometrical features, like edges, represent one of the most important perceptual information in an image, efficient exploitation of such geometrical information is a key ingredient of many image processing tasks, including compression, denoising and feature extraction. Therefore, the challenge for the image processing community is to design efficient geometrical schemes which can capture the intrinsic geometrical structure of natural images. This thesis focuses on developing computationally efficient tree based algorithms for attaining the optimal rate-distortion (R-D) behavior for certain simple classes of geometrical images, such as piecewise polynomial images with polynomial boundaries. A good approximation of this class allows to develop good approximation and compression schemes for images with strong geometrical features, and as experimental results show, also for real life images. We first investigate both the one dimensional (1-D) and two dimensional (2-D) piecewise polynomials signals. For the 1-D case, our scheme is based on binary tree segmentation of the signal. This scheme approximates the signal segments using polynomial models and utilizes an R-D optimal bit allocation strategy among the different signal segments. The scheme further encodes similar neighbors jointly and is called prune-join algorithm. This allows to achieve the correct exponentially decaying R-D behavior, D(R) ~ 2-cR, thus improving over classical wavelet schemes. We also show that the computational complexity of the scheme is of O(N logN). We then extend this scheme to the 2-D case using a quadtree, which also achieves an exponentially decaying R-D behavior, for the piecewise polynomial image model, with a low computational cost of O(N logN). Again, the key is an R-D optimized prune and join strategy. We further analyze the R-D performance of the proposed tree algorithms for piecewise smooth signals. We show that the proposed algorithms achieve the oracle like polynomially decaying asymptotic R-D behavior for both the 1-D and 2-D scenarios. Theoretical as well as numerical results show that the proposed schemes outperform wavelet based coders in the 2-D case. We then consider two interesting image processing problems, namely denoising and stereo image compression, in the framework of the tree structured segmentation. For the denoising problem, we present a tree based algorithm which performs denoising by compressing the noisy image and achieves improved visual quality by capturing geometrical features, like edges, of images more precisely compared to wavelet based schemes. We then develop a novel rate-distortion optimized disparity based coding scheme for stereo images. The main novelty of the proposed algorithm is that it performs the joint coding of disparity information and the residual image to achieve better R-D performance in comparison to standard block based stereo image coder