Entropy-constrained predictive residual vector quantization of digital images

A major problem with a VQ based image compression scheme is its codebook search complexity. Recently, a new VQ scheme called predictive residual vector quantizer (PRVQ) was proposed by Rizvi and Nasrabadi (see Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Image Processing (Austin), vol.1, p.608-12, Nov. 13-16, 1994) which has a performance very close to that of the predictive vector quantizer (PVQ) with very low search complexity. This paper presents a new variable-rate VQ scheme called entropy-constrained PRVQ (EC-PRVQ), which is designed by imposing a constraint on the output entropy of the PRVQ. The proposed EC-PRVQ is found to give a good rate-distortion performance and clearly outperforms the state-of-the-art image compression algorithm developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). The robustness of EC-PRVQ is demonstrated by encoding several test images taken from outside the training data