Rectangular region coding for image data compression

Abstract A new data compression algorithm for a binary image is presented. This is fully 2-dimensional and has a hierarchical format for describing a macroscopic image structure. An image is described as a set of uniform rectangles and a set of explicit point-by-point data which are outside of these rectangles. The basic problem involved is to find the largest possible rectangle in a given region. For this purpose an image pyramid is employed. The simulation results of this algorithm show a very good compression ratio. This algorithm has many other interesting characteristics and can be applied for the image data storage, image edition and image transmission.