Composite source coding techniques for image bandwidth compression

In this work the concept of composite source coding is addressed with particular reference to image signals and specific properties characterising the component sources are determined. The physical problem of source decomposition is formulated under a general formula in such a way that dynamic programming is used as a key algorithm to achieve efficiently the signal partitioning. The resulting solution is optimum in the sense that the rate required to transmit the component signals is minimum for pre-specified values of the average distortion in the reconstruction of the original signal. Models for each component are derived and their theoretical performance is compared with the results obtained by testing the method on real image data.