A foreground/background image coder for hardware implementation

Third generation (3G) mobile networks will enable applications such as videophones. To utilize 3G technology effectively, images would have to be coded at very low bit rates. At such low bit rates, it is desirable to emphasize the details of the foreground regions of interest at the expense of the background information. We describe an image coder which is capable of coding the foreground and background information at different bit rates and is suitable for hardware implementation. The coder uses a face segmentation algorithm to extract the facial region which is considered to be the foreground region. The uniqueness of the approach is its simplicity from the initial colour transformation to the final bit stream coding. We present simulation results showing the expected operation and performance of the coder.