FACOLA-face coder based on location and attention

Summary form only given. FACOLA (face coder based on location and attention) is proposed for potential applications such as compression of face pictures used in IC and ID cards. The face locator locates a face in an image using template matching and eigenface techniques. The attention detector detects high attention and low attention in the located face according to their different frequency characteristics. For high attention, usually high quality or lossless coding is required. The DCT is not suitable for such a case because it will not lead to an efficient compaction of the image energy and variable length coding (VLC) cannot be done efficiently. So a DPCM coder with three directional predictors is presented instead of the DCT. The prediction difference is quantized and the entropy coded DPCM coder supports lossless and lossy compression. The DCT coder is adopted for low attention and non-face area compression using different quantization factors.