A genetic approach to color image compression

Advances in compression technique will have to keep pace with the exponential increase in the need for storage and transport of bulky multimedia images. This paper concerns the use of vector quantization for processing color images. We propose a new, genetic algorithm based, scheme for code book design in the quantization process, and compare its performance with the widely used LindeBuzo-Gray algorithm [8]. We also introduce a new genetic operator known as synchronization that works especially well in this problem domain. The quality of the resulting code book is used as a performance criteria for LBG and for the proposed approach. Our observations reveal that the proposed scheme is better than the LBG algorithm by a factor of between 5% to 25%. The performance gain is especially significant for large code books.

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