Local search fractal image compression for fast integrated implementation

The well known drawback of fractal image coding is its heavy computation complexity. In this paper, we show however that only a very small portion of this complexity is needed to encode the contours and the smooth areas of the objects of a certain minimum size. This is simply achieved by a local search of the matching domain blocks without isometry. Therefore, instead of forcing the fractal coder to take care of all types of feature in the image, we limit itself to encoding the features of the type mentioned above. We give the role of capturing the missing detailed features to a DCT coder. This is much more cost effective than using a complete self-sufficient fractal coder. We provide a special method of fractal-DCT output recombination which prevents the introduction of the classic DCT artifacts while preserving the qualities of the local search fractal information. We give experimental results at the given total bit rate of 0.18 bit/pixel