Objectif
The emergence of new visual communications systems and the constant need for bandwidth savings, indicate that there is a need for more efficient compression schemes that should provide very high compression rates while retaining image quality. The objective of this project is therefore to investigate, develop, and demonstrate morphological source coding techniques for visual data and to propose a completely new coding/decoding scheme for still and moving images.
The emergence of new visual communications systems and the constant need for bandwidth savings, indicate that there is a need for more efficient compression schemes that should provide very high compression rates while retaining image quality. The objective of this research was therefore to investigate, develop and demonstrate morphological source coding techniques for visual data and to propose a completely new coding decoding scheme for still and moving images.
The chosen technical approach relied on techniques based on mathematical morphology. Mathematical morphology is a shape oriented approach to signal or image analysis. The encoding decoding scheme uses an object based approach using new algorithms in the segmentation, contour and texture coding processes. Mathematical morphology considers the signal to be composed of various opaque objects. This allows an efficient handling of the shape, size or connectivity information by analysing the signal according to its geometrical structure, and so avoids many of the weaknesses exhibited by floating point operations within pixel based schemes.
Work completed has created a common working environment consisting of an image data base and a common image processing software package, oriented toward mathematical morphology. The research has also selected and implemented some of the most significant classical algorithms as references for a final evaluation of the proposed morphological coding approach. An object based coding scheme that outperforms classical object based coder decoders (codecs) in terms of quality and of computational load has been demonstrated. Of special interest is a new hierarchical segmentation algorithm especially suited for progressive storage and transmission.
Technical Approach
The chosen technical approach relies on techniques based on mathematical morphology. Mathematical morphology is a shape-oriented approach to signal or image analysis. The encoding/decoding scheme will use an object-based approach using new algorithms in the segmentation, contour and texture coding processes. Mathematical morphology considers the signal to be composed of various opaque objects. This allows an efficient handling of the shape, size or connectivity information by analysing the signal according to its geometrical structure, and so avoids many of the weaknesses exhibited by floating point operations within pixel-based schemes.
The basic approach of the project is a segmentation process, a contour encoding process and an inside segment encoding process. Mathematical morphology provides a very powerful and efficient tool for segmentation known as 'watershed'. This can be modified or combined with other morphological tools to provide a multi-resolution decomposition of the image.
The approach allows the image to be described by contour information or shapes, and concentrated in the so-called morphological skeleton of the objects thus defined. If the structuring element is known, a binary image can be perfectly and uniquely reconstructed from its skeleton. Thus it is this skeleton that has to be encoded for onward transmission or storage.
The technical approach can thus be summarised as follows:
- Proposition and investigation of coding/decoding algorithms.
- Design of specific architecture for morphological coding.
- Demonstration of the approach for specific applications.
Key Issues
- Definition and simulation of architecture for the morphological codec.
- Comparison of morphological codec performance with current schemes.
- Identification of typical applications of the new coding/decoding scheme.
Expected Impact
At a time where compression techniques are being introduced across the whole range of image communications applications (very low bitrate mobile video-communications, low bitrate video-telephony, video-conferencing, video storage, still image storage and transmission, digital TV and HDTV, etc.) the timely development of object-based second-generation coding schemes is of vital importance for the evolution of the area. Morphology-based coders address pictures in terms of objects instead of arbitrarily-segmented image blocks, and therefore do not require high precision processing. They thus have the potential to increase compression ratios further while retaining image quality, to increase processing speed and eventually to reduce equipment costs. In addition, the techniques and tools developed by MORPHECO may have a great impact in the future standard MPEG-4.
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CORDIS classe les projets avec EuroSciVoc, une taxonomie multilingue des domaines scientifiques, grâce à un processus semi-automatique basé sur des techniques TLN. Voir: Le vocabulaire scientifique européen.
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