Lossless Two-Layer Coding using Histogram Packing Technique for HDR Images

Abstract

A novel method using the histogram packing technique with the two-layer coding having the backward compatibility to the legacy JPEG for base layer is proposed in this paper. The histogram sparseness of HDR images is discussed and it is pointed out that the histogram packing technique considering the sparseness is able to improve the performance of lossless compression for HDR images. The experimental results demonstrate that not only the proposed method has a higher compression performance than that of the JPEG XT part 8, but also there is no need to determine image-dependent parameter values for good compression performance. Moreover, the base layer produced by the proposed method has the backward compatibility to the well known legacy JPEG standard.