Unsupervised image compression-by-synthesis within a JPEG framework

An image compression scheme is proposed, utilising wavelet- based image segmentation and texture analysis, and patch- based texture synthesis. This has been incorporated into a JPEG framework. Homogeneous textured regions are identified and removed prior to transform coding. These regions are then replaced at the decoder by synthesis from marked samples, and colour matched to ensure similarity to the original. Experimental results on natural images show bitrate savings of over 18% compared with JPEG for little change in measured visual quality.