Effective region-based chroma subsampling method for Bayer CFA images

Abstract

The Bayer color filter array (CFA) pattern is the most widely used CFA pattern in the digital color cameras market. The chroma 4:2:0 subsampling of Bayer CFA images is a necessary process prior to compression. In this paper, based on the CFA block-distortion minimization criterion, we propose an effective region-based chroma 4:2:0 subsampling method for Bayer CFA images. Based on the test Kodak and IMAX datasets, the experimental results demonstrated that in the current high efficiency video coding (HEVC) reference software HM-16.18, our method has substantial quality of the reconstructed images when compared with the existing six chroma subsampling methods.