Digital image blurring-deblurring process for improved storage and transmission

This paper investigates the likelihood of using a blurring-de-blurring process as a pre-post-processing step in standard image reconstruction and compression. As such, the paper relates to image coding and compression systems whereby an original image can be transmitted or stored in a coded and compressed representation which renders it blurred and degraded. The compressibility of an image increases with the blurring, whereby the relation between compression ratio (CR) and the blurring scale is approximately linear. Hence, by pre-processing and blurring an image before compression, the CR will increase accordingly. The function or process tested here for blurring-deblurring an image is based on a pixel group processing, whereby the original image is sampled at sub-pixel levels. Since the subpixel shifts between each pixel group sampling are known exactly, a blurred image is created which can be shown to contain the details of the original image and thereby restored or reconstructed by reversing the blurring process. The complementary effects of increased CR are examined in terms of coding/decoding execution times and the quality of the reconstructed images.