Segmented image coding with contour simplification for video sequences

A segmented image coding algorithm for video sequences is presented. The first frame in the data is always encoded in an intraframe mode, while the rest of the frames in the data are encoded in an interframe mode. The interframe encoding is based on (1) block motion vector estimation and coding, (2) segmentation of the prediction error image and classification of the regions in the foreground/background, (3) contour simplification and coding, and (4) texture approximation by a linear combination of weakly separable base functions and coefficient coding. The contour simplification leads to an average reduction of 30% in the number of bits needed for the contour coding, the system can be adjusted at different bit-rates by parameter tuning, the simulation results are of high quality in terms of PSNR and they show that our coding approach is particularly promising for very low bit-rate applications.

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