Image compression via dense descriptors assisted synthesis

In this paper, we propose a novel image compression approach towards visual quality rather than pixel fidelity. We intentionally remove several blocks at the encoder and reconstruct them at the decoder to get bits reduction. The removal blocks are wisely and adaptively selected based on blocks clustering, patch similarity and removal priority. A well-suited similarity measurement is defined to capture the common pattern between patches as well as tell their substitutability based on boundary consistency. To assist the removal blocks reconstruction at the decoder, we extract some dense descriptors as the side information to the decoder. Encouraging experimental results show that our compression scheme achieves up to 20.26%bits reduction with a comparable visual quality compared to the most recent standard High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).