Spatially scalable compressed image sensing with hybrid transform and inter-layer prediction model

Compressive imaging is an emerging application of compressed sensing, devoted to acquisition, encoding and reconstruction of images using random projections as measurements. In this paper we propose a novel method to provide a scalable encoding of an image acquired by means of compressed sensing techniques. Two bit-streams are generated to provide two distinct quality levels: a low-resolution base layer and full-resolution enhancement layer. In the proposed method we exploit a fast preview of the image at the encoder in order to perform inter-layer prediction and encode the prediction residuals only. The proposed method successfully provides resolution and quality scalability with modest complexity and it provides gains in the quality of the reconstructed images with respect to separate encoding of the quality layers. Remarkably, we also show that the scheme can also provide significant gains with respect to a direct, non-scalable system, thus accomplishing two features at once: scalability and improved reconstruction performance.