A practical approach to fractal-based image compression

Abstract

A technique for image compression is based on a very simple type of iterative fractal. A wavelet transform (quadrature mirror filter pyramid) is used to decompose an image into bands containing information from different scales (spatial frequencies) and orientations. The conditional probabilities between these different scale bands are then determined, and used as the basis for a predictive coder. The wavelet transform's various scale and orientation bands have a great deal of redundant, self-similar structure in the form of multi-modal conditional probabilities, so that linear predictors perform poorly. A simple histogram method is used to determine the multi-modal conditional probabilities between scales. The resulting predictive coder is easily integrated into existing subband coding schemes.<>