Practical low bit rate predictive image coder using multi-rate processing and adaptive entropy coding

The modified differential pulse coded modulation (DPCM) codec with multi-rate processing has been shown to able to efficiently code the source with monotonically decreasing spectrum at low bit rates [A.N. Kim and T.A. Ramstad]. A practical image coder is designed based on this approach. Two dimensional DPCM is used along with decimation and interpolation to reduce the number of transmitted samples. The decimation rate depends on the signal spectrum and the bit rate. Further bit rate reduction is achieved through adaptive entropy coding. Wiener filter is appended in the decoder for minimizing distortion caused by quantization noise. The decimation filter can be implemented using simple IIR filters. The necessary side information is low. Simulation results show that the coder is able to give good compression performance at low bit rates which is superior to conventional DPCM codec and JPEG. Subjective quality can be as good as JPEG2000. While at very low bit rates the proposed codec is able to retain certain image characteristics better than JPEG2000.