Image deblocking using spatially adaptive wavelet thresholding

Low bit rate image coding is essential for many visual communication applications. However, it yields visually annoying artifacts that highly degrade the perceptual quality of image data. In this paper we proposed a novel method for reducing the blocking artifact that occurs when using DCT image coding at low bit rates. The blocking artifact has varied visibility in different region, that it, it is more visible in a smooth region than detailed region such as textures and edges. Hence, the proposed method is based on image segmentation and then thresholding the coefficients of different regions with adaptive thresholds. The proposed method gives consistent improvement over the previous methods for deblocking in term of peak signal-to- noise ratio, edge variance, and visual quality.