Directional Lapped Transforms for Image Coding

In this paper, we present the design of directional lapped transforms for image coding. A lapped transform, which can be implemented by a prefilter followed by a discrete cosine transform (DCT), can be factorized into elementary operators. The corresponding directional lapped transform is generated by applying each elementary operator along a given direction. The proposed directional lapped transforms are not only nonredundant and perfectly reconstructed, but they can also provide a basis along an arbitrary direction. These properties, along with the advantages of lapped transforms, make the proposed transforms appealing for image coding. A block-based directional transform scheme is also presented and integrated into HD Phtoto, one of the state-of-the-art image coding systems, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed transforms.