Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

UNIT- V IMAGE COMPRESSION AND RECOGNITION

IMAGE DATA COMPRESSION

Introduction
In recent years, there have been significant advancements in algorithms and
architectures for the processing of image, video, and audio signals. These
advancements have proceeded along several directions. On the algorithmic front, new
techniques have led to the development of robust methods to reduce the size of the
image, video, or audio data. Such methods are extremely vital in many applications that
manipulate and store digital data. Informally, we refer to the process of size reduction as
a compression process. We will define this process in a more formal way later.
On the architecture front, it is now feasible to put sophisticated compression
processes on a relatively low-cost single chip; this has spurred a great deal of activity in
developing multimedia systems for the large consumer market. One of the exciting
prospects of such advancements is that multimedia information comprising image,
video, and audio has the potential to become just another data type. This usually
implies that multimedia information will be digitally encoded so that it can be
manipulated, stored, and transmitted along with other digital data types. For such data
usage to be pervasive, it is essential that the data encoding is standard across different
platforms and applications. This will foster widespread development of applications and
will also promote interoperability among systems from different vendors. Furthermore,
standardization can lead to the development of cost effective implementations, which in
turn will promote the widespread use of multimedia information. This is the primary
motivation behind the emergence of image and video compression standards.

Background
Compression is a process intended to yield a compact digital representation of a
signal. In the literature, the terms source coding, data compression, bandwidth
compression, and signal compression are all used to refer to the process of
compression. In the cases where the signal is defined as an image, a video stream, or
an audio signal, the generic problem of compression is to minimize the bit rate of their
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

digital representation. There are many applications that benefit when image, video, and
audio signals are available in compressed form. Without compression, most of these
applications would not be feasible!

Example 1: Let us consider facsimile image transmission. In most facsimile

machines, the document is scanned and digitised. Typically, an 8.5x11 inches page is
scanned at 200 dpi; thus, resulting in 3.74 Mbits. Transmitting this data over a low-cost
14.4 kbits/s modem would require 5.62 minutes. With compression, the transmission
time can be reduced to 17 seconds. This results in substantial savings in transmission
costs.
Example 2: Let us consider a video-based CD-ROM application. Full-motion video, at
30 fps and a 720 x 480 resolution, generates data at 20.736 Mbytes/s. At this rate, only
31 seconds of video can be stored on a 650 MByte CD-ROM. Compression technology
can increase the storage capacity to 74 minutes, for VHS-grade video quality.

Image, video, and audio signals are amenable to compression due to the factors
below.
• There is considerable statistical redundancy in the signal.
1. Within a single image or a single video frame, there exists significant correlation
among neighbor samples. This correlation is referred to as spatial correlation.
2. For data acquired from multiple sensors (such as satellite images), there exists
significant correlation amongst samples from these sensors. This correlation is referred
to as spectral correlation.
3. For temporal data (such as video), there is significant correlation amongst samples in
different segments of time. This is referred to as temporal correlation.
• There is considerable information in the signal that is irrelevant from a
perceptual point of view.
• Some data tends to have high-level features that are redundant across space
and time; that is, the data is of a fractal nature.
For a given application, compression schemes may exploit any one or all of the
above factors to achieve the desired compression data rate.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

There are many applications that benefit from data compression technology.
Table 1.1 lists a representative set of such applications for image, video, and audio
data, as well as typical data rates of the corresponding compressed bit streams. Typical
data rates for the uncompressed bit streams are also shown.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

In the following figure, a systems view of the compression process is depicted.

Figure Generic compression system

The core of the encoder is the source coder. The source coder performs the
compression process by reducing the input data rate to a level that can be supported by
the storage or transmission medium. The bit rate output of the encoder is measured in
bits per sample or bits per second. For image or video data, a pixel is the basic element;
thus, bits per sample are also referred to as bits per pixel or bits per pel. In the
literature, the term compression ratio, denoted as cr , is also used instead of bit rate to
characterize the capability of the compression system. An intuitive definition of cr is

This definition is somewhat ambiguous and depends on the data type and the
specific compression method that is employed. For a still-image, size could refer to the
bits needed to represent the entire image. For video, size could refer to the bits needed
to represent one frame of video. Many compression methods for video do not process
each frame of video, hence, a more commonly used notion for size is the bits needed to
represent one second of video.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

In a practical system, the source coder is usually followed by a second level of

coding: the channel coder. The channel coder translates the compressed bit stream into
a signal suitable for either storage or transmission. In most systems, source coding and
channel coding are distinct processes. In recent years, methods to perform combined
source and channel coding have also been developed. Note that, in order to reconstruct
the image, video, or audio signal, one needs to reverse the processes of channel coding
and source coding. This is usually performed at the decoder.
From a system design viewpoint, one can restate the compression problem as a
bit rate minimisation problem, where several constraints may have to be met, including
the following:
 � Specified level of signal quality. This constraint is usually applied at the
decoder.
 � Implementation complexity. This constraint is often applied at the decoder,
and in some instances at both the encoder and the decoder.
 � Communication delay. This constraint refers to the end to end delay, and is
measured from the start of encoding a sample to the complete decoding of that
sample.
Note that, these constraints have different importance in different applications. For
example, in a two-way teleconferencing system, the communication delay might be the
major constraint, whereas, in a television broadcasting system, signal quality and
decoder complexity might be the main constraints.

Types of image compression

Image compression can be:

 Reversible (loss less), with no loss of information.
 A new image is identical to the original image (after
decompression).
 Original data exactly recovered from compressed data
 Lower compression ratio
 Reversibility is necessary in most image analysis applications.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

 The compression ratio is typically 2 to 10 times.

 Examples are Huffman coding and run-length coding.
 Non reversible (lossy), with loss of some information.
 Lossy compression is often used in image communication,
video,WWW, etc.
 It is usually important that the image visually is still nice.
 The compression ratio is typically 10 to 30 times.
 Loss of information
 Perceptual loss of information reduced (controlled)
 Higher compression ratio
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

Lossless versus lossy compression

Lossless compression
In many applications, the decoder has to reconstruct without any loss the original
data. For a lossless compression process, the reconstructed data and the original data
must be identical in value for each and every data sample. This is also referred to as a
reversible process. In lossless compression, for a specific application, the choice of a
compression method involves a trade-off along the three dimensions depicted in Figure
1.2; that is, coding efficiency, coding complexity, and coding delay.

Coding Efficiency
This is usually measured in bits per sample or bits per second (bps). Coding
efficiency is usually limited by the information content or entropy of the source. In
intuitive terms, the entropy of a source X provides a measure for the "randomness" of X.
From a compression theory point of view, sources with large entropy are more difficult
to compress (for example, random noise is very hard to compress).

Coding Complexity
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

The complexity of a compression process is analogous to the computational

effort needed to implement the encoder and decoder functions. The computational effort
is usually measured in terms of memory requirements and number of arithmetic
operations. The operations count is characterised by the term millions of operations per
second and is often referred to as MOPS. Here, by operation, we imply a basic
arithmetic operation that is supported by the computational engine. In the compression
literature, the term MIPS (millions of instructions per second) is sometimes used. This is
specific to a computational engine's architecture; thus, in this text we refer to coding
complexity in terms of MOPS. In some applications, such as portable devices, coding
complexity may be characterised by the power requirements of a hardware
implementation.

Coding Delay
A complex compression process often leads to increased coding delays at the
encoder and the decoder. Coding delays can be alleviated by increasing the processing
power of the computational engine; however, this may be impractical in environments
where there is a power constraint or when the underlying computational engine cannot
be improved. Furthermore, in many applications, coding delays have to be constrained;
for example, in interactive communications.

Lossy compression
The majority of the applications in image or video data processing do not require
that the reconstructed data and the original data are identical in value. Thus, some
amount of loss is permitted in the reconstructed data. A compression process that
results in an imperfect reconstruction is referred to as a lossy compression process.
This compression process is irreversible. In practice, most irreversible compression
processes degrade rapidly the signal quality when they are repeatedly applied on
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

previously decompressed data. The choice of a specific lossy compression method

involves trade-offs along the four dimensions shown in Figure 1.3. Due to the additional
degree of freedom, namely, in the signal quality, a lossy compression process can yield
higher compression ratios than a lossless compression scheme.
Signal Quality
This term is often used to characterize the signal at the output of the decoder.
There is no universally accepted measure for signal quality. One measure that is often
cited is the signal to noise ratio SNR, which can be expressed as

The noise signal energy is defined as the energy measured for a hypothetical
signal that is the difference between the encoder input signal and the decoder output
signal. Note that, SNR as defined here is given in decibels (dB). In the case of images
or video, PSNR (peak signal-to noise ratio) is used instead of SNR. The calculations are
essentially the same as in the case of SNR , however, in the numerator, instead of
using the encoder input signal one uses a hypothetical signal with a signal strength of
255 (the maximum decimal value of an unsigned 8-bit number, such as in a pixel).
High SNR or PSNR values do not always correspond to signals with perceptually
high quality.
Another measure of signal quality is the mean opinion score, where the
performance of a compression process is characterized by the subjective quality of the
decoded signal.

METHODS FOR LOSSLESS COMPRESSION

Lossless compression refers to compression methods for which the original
uncompressed data set can be recovered exactly from the compressed stream. The
need for lossless compression arises from the fact that many applications, such as the
compression of digitized medical data, require that no loss be introduced from the
compression method. Bitonal image transmission via a facsimile device also imposes
such requirements. In recent years, several compression standards have been
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

developed for the lossless compression of such images. We discuss these standards
later. In general, even when lossy compression is allowed, the overall compression
scheme may be a combination of a lossy compression process followed by a lossless
compression process. Various image, video, and audio compression standards follow
this model, and several of the lossless compression schemes used in these standards
are described in this section. The general model of a lossless compression scheme is
as depicted in the following figure.

Basic Concepts of image compression

Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

Data Redundancy
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

 Data that provide no relevant information=redundant data or redundancy.

 Image compression techniques can be designed by reducing or eliminating
the Data Redundancy
 Image coding or compression has a goal to reduce the amount of data by
reducing the amount of redundancy.

Three basic data redundancies

 Coding Redundancy
 Interpixel Redundancy
 Psychovisual Redundancy
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

 Coding
 if grey levels of image are coded in such away that uses more
symbols than is necessary
 Inter-pixel
 can guess the value of any pixel from its neighbours
 Psyco-visual
 some information is less important than other info in normal
visual processing

 Coding redundancy
 Fewer bits to represent frequent symbols
 Huffman coding : Lossless
 Occurs when the data used to represent the image is not utilized
in an optimal manner

 Interpixel redundancy
 Neighboring pixels have similar values
 Occurs because adjacent pixels tend to be highly correlated, in
most images the brightness levels do not change rapidly, but
change gradually
 Predictive coding : Lossless
 Correlation between pixels is not used in coding
 Correlation due to geometry and structure
 Value of any pixel can be predicted from the value of the
neighbours
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

 Information carried by one pixel is small

 Take 2D visual information
 transformed  NONVISUAL format
 This is called a MAPPING
 A REVERSIBLE MAPPING allows original to be reconstructed
after MAPPING
 Use run-length coding

 Psychovisual redundancy
 Some information is more important to the human visual system
than other types of information
 Quantization : Lossy
 Remove information that human visual system cannot perceive
 Removal of high frequency data : Lossy
 Due to properties of human eye
 Eye does not respond with equal sensitivity to all visual
information (e.g. RGB)
 Certain information has less relative importance
 If eliminated, quality of image is relatively unaffected
 This is because HVS only sensitive to 64 levels
 Use fidelity criteria to assess loss of information

Coding redundancy

If the gray level of an image is coded in a way that uses more code words than
necessary to represent each gray level, then the resulting image is said to contain
coding redundancy.

Interpixel redundancy
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

The value of any given pixel can be predicted from the values of its neighbors.
The information carried by is small. Therefore the visual contribution of a single pixel to
an image is redundant. Otherwise called as spatial redundant geometric redundant or
interpixel redundant. Eg: Run length coding

General compression model

Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

• Before encoding, preprocessing is performed to prepare the image for the encoding
process, and consists of any number of operations that are application specific
• After the compressed file has been decoded, postprocessing can be performed to
eliminate some of the potentially undesirable artifacts brought about by the
compression process
• The compressor can be broken into following stages:

1. Data reduction: Image data can be reduced by gray level and/or spatial quantization,
or can undergo any desired image improvement (for example, noise removal)
process

2. Mapping: Involves mapping the original image data into another mathematical space
where it is easier to compress the data

3. Quantization: Involves taking potentially continuous data from the mapping stage
and putting it in discrete form
4. Coding: Involves mapping the discrete data from the quantizer onto a code in an
optimal manner
• A compression algorithm may consist of all the stages, or it may consist of only one
or two of the stages
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

The decompressor can be broken down into following stages:

1. Decoding: Takes the compressed file and reverses the original coding
by mapping the codes to the original, quantized values
2. Inverse mapping: Involves reversing the original mapping process
3. Postprocessing: Involves enhancing the look of the final image
• This may be done to reverse any preprocessing, for example, enlarging
an image that was shrunk in the data reduction process
• In other cases the postprocessing may be used to simply enhance the
image to ameliorate any artifacts from the compression process itself
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

• The mapping process is important because image data tends to be highly

correlated
• Specifically, if the value of one pixel is known, it is highly likely that the
adjacent pixel value is similar
• By finding a mapping equation that decorrelates the data this type of data
redundancy can be removed
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

Huffmann Coding

• The Huffman code, developed by D. Huffman in 1952, is a minimum length

code
• This means that given the statistical distribution of the gray levels (the
histogram), the Huffman algorithm will generate a code that is as close as
possible to the minimum bound, the entropy
• The method results in an unequal (or variable) length code, where the size of the
code words can vary
• For complex images, Huffman coding alone will typically reduce the file by 10% to
50% (1.1:1 to 1.5:1), but this ratio can be improved to 2:1 or 3:1 by preprocessing
for irrelevant information removal

The Huffman algorithm can be described in five steps:

1. Find the gray level probabilities for the image by finding the histogram
2. Order the input probabilities (histogram magnitudes) from smallest to largest
3. Combine the smallest two by addition
4. GOTO step 2, until only two probabilities are left
5. By working backward along the tree, generate code by alternating assignment of 0
and 1
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

Run Length Coding

• Run-length coding (RLC) works by counting adjacent pixels with the same
gray level value called the run-length, which is then encoded and stored

• RLC works best for binary, two-valued, images

• RLC can also work with complex images that have been preprocessed by
thresholding to reduce the number of gray levels to two
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

• RLC can be implemented in various ways, but the first step is to define the
required parameters

• Horizontal RLC (counting along the rows) or vertical RLC (counting along the
columns) can be used

• In basic horizontal RLC, the number of bits used for the encoding depends
on the number of pixels in a row
n
• If the row has 2 pixels, then the required number of bits is n, so that a run
that is the length of the entire row can be encoded

Example
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

Compression Achieved

Original image requires 3 bits per pixel (in total - 8x8x3=192 bits).

Compressed image has 29 runs and needs 3+3=6 bits per

run (in total - 174 bits or 2.72 bits per pixel).

Image fidelity criteria

Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

IMAGE COMPRESSION STANDARDS

Standard Possible Application Areas

s
CCITT Facsimile, Document
T.4
CCITT Imaging
Facsimile, Document
T.6
JPEG Imaging
Photographic Imaging
JBIG Facsimile, Document
CCITT Imaging
Teleconferencing
H.261
MPEG-1 Video, Digital Storage
MPEG-2 Media(DSM)
Video, HDTV, DSM
MPEG-4 Audio-visual
Communications,

JPEG Encoding

 Used to compress pictures and graphics.

 In JPEG, a grayscale picture is divided into 8x8 pixel blocks to decrease the
number of calculations.
Basic idea: Change the picture into a linear (vector) sets of numbers that reveals the
redundancies. The redundancies is then removed by one of lossless compression
methods.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

 DCT: Discrete Concise Transform

 DCT transforms the 64 values in 8x8 pixel block in a way that the relative
relationships between pixels are kept but the redundancies are revealed.
 Example:

JPEG 2000
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

Quantization:
 After T table is created, the values are quantized to reduce the number of bits
needed for encoding.
 Quantization divides the number of bits by a constant, then drops the fraction. This
is done to optimize the number of bits and the number of 0s for each particular
application.
Compression:
 Quantized values are read from the table and redundant 0s are removed.
 To cluster the 0s together, the table is read diagonally in an zigzag fashion. The
reason is if the table doesn’t have fine changes, the bottom right corner of the table
is all 0s.
 JPEG usually uses lossless run-length encoding at the compression phase.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

STEPS IN JPEG COMPRESSION

 Divide Each plane into 8x8 size blocks.

 Compute DCT of each block
 Treat separately DC components of each block.
 Apply Quantization to discard values
 Separately encode DC components and transmit data.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

How JPEG Compression performed?

Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

• The JPEG2000 standard is also based on the wavelet transform

• It provides high quality images at very high compression ratios
• The committee that developed the standard had certain goals for
JPEG2000
• The goals are as follows:
1. To provide better compression than the DCT-based JPEG algorithm
2. To allow for progressive transmission of high quality images
3. To be able to compress binary and continuous tone images by allowing
1 to 16 bits for image components
4. To allow random access to subimages

5. To be robust to transmission errors

• To allow for sequentially image encoding
•
• The JPEG2000 compression method begins by level shifting the data to center it at
zero, followed by an optional transform to decorrelate the data, such as a color
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

transform for color images The one-dimensional wavelet transform is applied to the
rows and columns, and the coefficients are quantized based on the image size and
number of wavelet bands utilized
• These quantized coefficients are then arithmetically coded on a bitplane basis

Transform Coding

 A reversible linear transform (such as Fourier Transform) is used to map the

image into a set of transform coefficients
 These coefficients are then quantized and coded.
 The goal of transform coding is to decorrelate pixels and pack as much
information into small number of transform coefficients.
 Compression is achieved during quantization not during the transform step

Procedure

 Divide the image into n × n sub-images.

 Transform each sub-image using a reversible transform (e.g., the Hotelling
transform, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) or the discrete cosine
transform (DCT)).
 Quantify, i.e., truncate the transformed image (e.g., by using DFT,and DCT
frequencies with small amplitude can be removed without much information
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

loss). The quantification can be either image dependent (IDP) or image

independent (IIP).
 Code the resulting data, normally using some kind of “variable length
coding”, e.g., Huffman code.
 The coding is not reversible (unless step 3 is skipped). Divide the image into
n × n sub-images.

Transform coding, is a form of block coding done in the transform domain. The
image is divided into blocks, or subimages, and the transform is calculated for each
block
• Any of the previously defined transforms can be used, frequency (e.g.
Fourier) or sequency (e.g. Walsh/Hadamard), but it has been determined that
the discrete cosine transform (DCT) is optimal for most images
• The newer JPEG2000 algorithms uses the wavelet transform, which has
been found to provide even better compression
•
• After the transform has been calculated, the transform coefficients are
quantized and coded
• This method is effective because the frequency/sequency transform of
images is very efficient at putting most of the information into relatively few
coefficients, so many of the high frequency coefficients can be quantized to 0
(eliminated completely)
• This type of transform is a special type of mapping that uses spatial
frequency concepts as a basis for the mapping
• The main reason for mapping the original data into another mathematical
space is to pack the information (or energy) into as few coefficients as
possible
• The simplest form of transform coding is achieved by filtering by eliminating
some of the high frequency coefficients

• However, this will not provide much compression, since the transform data is
typically floating point and thus 4 or 8 bytes per pixel (compared to the
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

original pixel data at 1 byte per pixel), so quantization and coding is applied
to the reduced data
• Quantization includes a process called bit allocation, which determines the
number of bits to be used to code each coefficient based on its importance

• Typically, more bits are used for lower frequency components where the
energy is concentrated for most images, resulting in a variable bit rate or
nonuniform quantization and better resolution
• Two particular types of transform coding have been widely explored:
1. Zonal coding
2. Threshold coding
• These two vary in the method they use for selecting the transform
coefficients to retain (using ideal filters for transform coding selects the
coefficients based on their location in the transform domain)

Zonal coding
• It involves selecting specific coefficients based on maximal variance
• A zonal mask is determined for the entire image by finding the variance
for each frequency component
• This variance is calculated by using each subimage within the image as
a separate sample and then finding the variance within this group of
subimages
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

• The zonal mask is a bitmap of 1's and 0', where the 1's correspond to the
coefficients to retain, and the 0's to the ones to eliminate
• As the zonal mask applies to the entire image, only one mask is required

Threshold coding
• It selects the transform coefficients based on specific value
• A different threshold mask is required for each block, which increases
file size as well as algorithmic complexity
• In practice, the zonal mask is often predetermined because the low
frequency terms tend to contain the most information, and hence exhibit the
most variance
• In this case we select a fixed mask of a given shape and desired
compression ratio, which streamlines the compression process
• It also saves the overhead involved in calculating the variance of each group of
subimages for compression and also eases the decompression process
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

• Typical masks may be square, triangular or circular and the cutoff frequency is
determined by the compression ratio

Lossless Predictive Coding

Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

Lossy Predictive Coding

Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

CCITT Compression method

Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

TWO MARKS QUESTIONS

1. What is image compression?
2. What are two main types of compression?
3. What is the need for Compression?
4. What are different Compression Methods?
5. Define is coding redundancy?
6. Define interpixel redundancy?
7. What is run length coding?
8. Define compression ratio.
9. Define psycho visual redundancy?
10. Write notes on threshold coding.

12 MARKS QUESTIONS
1. Explain the schematics of image compression standard JPEG.
2. Explain CCITT Image compression standard.
3. Explain lossy and lose less predictive coding with a neat sketch.
Course Code & Name CEC366 Image Processing

4. Briefly explain (a) variable length coding (b) Transform coding (c) Zonal coding.
5. Explain Shannon’s coding with a suitable example.
6. Explain Huffman coding with a suitable example.
7. Explain Pixel and threshold coding with a suitable example.