Digital representation and storage of high quality color images by anisotropic enhancement and subsampling

The application of novel anisotropic filter design techniques based on properties of human vision to the processing of luminance and chrominance components of color images is considered. Applied independently, these anisotropic filters can be used for the sequential digital representation of images by subsampling. By using them with two-dimensional quadrature modulation of chrominance signals, they led to a novel scheme for color composite images in which the skewing of energy due to the anisotropy of the filters improves the juxtaposition of luminance and chrominance in the two-dimensional frequency domain. It is found that the image quality is substantially better than that of NTSC images for either sequential or composite techniques