Minimum description length criterion and segmentation map coding for region-based video compression

This paper presents a new technique for region-oriented video compression based on the minimization of a minimum description length (MDL) criterion. The proposed scheme is based on a region-based motion compensation approach, in which the displaced frame difference (DFD) is coded together with the segmentation map and the motion parameters. The region-based segmentation is approximated by a polygonal representation which permits us to significantly reduce the segmentation coding cost. The polygonal approximation, which minimizes the MDL criterion, is considered the optimal approximation in terms of compression performance. In this contest, the MDL criterion has been developed and tested for the three following DFD coding techniques: (1) entropy coding of the quantized DFD image; (2) entropy coding of the quantized DFD values obtained after morphological filtering of the DFD image; and (3) DCT-based coding of the DFD image. The experimental results, presented on real video sequences, validate the proposed approach