System and method for progressively transforming and coding digital data

Abstract

A system and method facilitating progressively transforming and coding digital pictures is provided. The present invention via employment of a multi-resolution lapped transform provides for progressive rendering as well as mitigation of blocking artifacts and ringing artifacts as compared to many conventional compression systems. The invention includes a color space mapper, a multi-resolution lapped transform, a quantizer, a scanner and an entropy encoder. The multi-resolution lapped transform outputs transform coefficients, for example, first transform coefficients and second transform coefficients. A multi-resolution representation can be obtained utilizing second transform coefficients of the multi-resolution lapped transform. The color space mapper maps an input image to a color space representation of the input image. The color space representation of the input image is then provided to the multi-resolution lapped transform. The quantizer receives the first transform coefficients and / or the second transform coefficients and provides an output of quantized coefficients for use by the scanner and / or the entropy encoder. The scanner scans the quantized coefficients in order to produce a one-dimensional vector for use by the entropy encoder. The entropy encoder encodes the quantized coefficients received from the quantizer and / or the scanner resulting in data compression.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 206,506, filed Aug. 18, 2005, and entitled, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROGRESSIVELY TRANSFORMING AND CODING DIGITAL DATA”, which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 109,291, filed Mar. 27, 2002, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,006,699 B2, entitled, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROGRESSIVELY TRANSFORMING AND CODING DIGITAL DATA.” The entireties of the above-noted applications are incorporated herein by reference. This application is also related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 206,507, filed on Aug. 18, 2005, entitled, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROGRESSIVELY TRANSFORMING AND CODING DIGITAL DATA”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 206,508, filed on Aug. 18, 2005, entitled, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROGRESSIVELY TRANSFORMING AND CODING DIGITAL DATA”, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 206,390, filed on Aug. 18, 2005, entitled, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROGRESSIV...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The present invention provides a digital picture compression system and methodology that uses a multi-resolution lapped transform to mitigate blocking artifacts and ringing artifacts associated with conventional picture compression systems. The system includes a color space mapper, a multi-resolution lapped transform, a quantizer, a scanner, and an entropy encoder. The invention also provides a picture decompression system and methodology that uses an entropy decoder, an inverse transform, and a reverse color space mapper. The invention can be used in various document image applications, such as segmented layered image systems, photocopiers, document scanners, optical character recognition systems, personal digital assistants, fax machines, digital cameras, digital video cameras, and video games. The invention also provides computer usable instructions for a system for picture compression and a system for picture decompression, as well as data packets adapted to facilitate data compression."

Problems solved by technology

Although storage device capacity has increased significantly, the demand for information has outpaced capacity advancements.

Even with the increase of transmission rates, such as broadband, DSL, cable modem Internet and the like, transmission limits are easily reached with uncompressed information.

A tradeoff exists between the two compression modes in that lossy compression provides for a better compression ratio than lossless compression because some degree of data integrity compromise is tolerated.

Lossless compression may be used, for example, when compressing critical text, because failure to reconstruct exactly the data can dramatically affect quality and readability of the text.

Picture compression is a particularly important technical problem, because digital pictures are a significant portion of the information growth referred to previously.

For example, one disadvantage of JPEG is that at low bit rates the DCT produces irregularities and discontinuities in a reconstructed image (known as tiling or blocking artifacts).

These blocking artifacts cause an undesirable degradation in image quality.

Another disadvantage of JPEG is that JPEG cannot perform image reconstruction that is progressive in fidelity.

In other words, if an image is encoded at a certain fidelity and a lower fidelity is later desired (for example, due to limited bandwidth or storage availability), the image must be decoded and re-encoded.

Although wavelets provide smooth signal reconstruction without blocking artifacts, they can lead to an increase in blurring and ringing artifacts.

Furthermore, JPEG2000 uses a relatively complex coefficient encoding system, resulting in a compression technique that can be 3× (or more) slower than JPEG.

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