A 6:1 image‐compression method using directional prediction for LCD overdrive

Abstract— An overdrive technology was developed and is widely used to diminish motion blur in LCDs. To store a previous frame in the overdrive operation in a limited‐sized memory, simple image‐compression techniques are required. By considering the strong correlation of nearby pixels in natural images, a new 6:1 color‐image‐compression method based on directional prediction is proposed. Different from the directional prediction of intra‐coding in H.264/AVC, the predictable direction is determined beforehand to minimize the computation complexity. A simple content‐adaptive quantization and bit‐streaming method, which preserves image details and is free from blocking artifacts, is also proposed. The experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms the vector quantization block truncation coding method with an average 3‐dB peak signal‐to‐noise ratio (PSNR) as well as the subjective quality in terms of blocking artifacts.     

In‐band scalable video coding with integrated wavelet‐based display driving

Abstract— The increasing demand for multimedia over networks and the heterogeneous nature of today's networks and playback devices impose the stringent need for scalable video coding. In this context, in‐band wavelet‐based video‐coding architectures offer full scalability in terms of quality, resolution, and frame‐rate and provide compression performance competitive with that of state‐of‐the‐art non‐scalable technology. Despite these advances, video streaming over wireless networks to handheld terminals is lagging in popularity due to the high power consumption of the existing portable devices. As a possible approach to alleviate this problem, the integration of wavelet‐based passive‐matrix‐display driving into the inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT) block of the in‐band video decoding architecture was investigated. In a nutshell, the IDWT no longer needs to be performed by the decoder, being synthesized instead by the display itself. This integration reduces the number of calculations required to generate the driving waveforms for passive‐matrix displays and inherently leads to reduced power consumption on portable terminals. Moreover, the wavelet transform and the considered video‐codec architecture are both resolution‐scalable. Hence, the resolution‐scalability feature of the video codec, enabling resolution‐scalable display driving, is another means to control the power consumption of the portable device.     

Statistical, DCT and vector quantisation-based video codec

The authors present a novel hybrid statistical, DCT and vector quantisation-based video-coding technique. In intra mode of operation, an input frame is divided into a number of non-overlapping pixel blocks. A discrete cosine transform then converts the coefficients in each block into the frequency domain. Coefficients with the same frequency index at different blocks are put together generating a number of matrices, where each matrix contains the coefficients of a particular frequency index. The matrix, which contains the DC coefficients, is losslessly coded. Matrices containing high frequency coefficients are coded using a novel statistical encoder. In inter mode of operation, overlapped block motion estimation / compensation is employed to exploit temporal redundancy between successive frames and generates a displaced frame difference (DFD) for each inter-frame. A wavelet transform then decomposes the DFD-frame into its frequency subbands. Coefficients in the detail subbands are vector quantised while coefficients in the baseband are losslessly coded. To evaluate the performance of the codec, the proposed codec and the adaptive subband vector quantisation (ASVQ) video codec, which has been shown to outperform H.263 at all bitrates, were applied to a number of test sequences. Results indicate that the proposed codec outperforms the ASVQ video codec subjectively and objectively at all bitrates.     

Comparison of transform coding techniques for two-dimensional arbitrarily shaped images

Envisioned advanced multimedia video services include arbitrarily shaped (AS) image segments as well as regular rectangular images. Image segments of the TV weather report produced by the chromo-key technique [1] and image segments produced by video analysis and image segmentation [2–4] are typical examples of AS image segments. This paper explores efficient intraframe transform coding techniques for general two-dimensional (2D) AS image segments, treating the traditional rectangular images as a special case. In particular, we focus on the transform coding of the partially defined image blocks along the boundary of the AS image segments. We recognize two different approaches — thebrute force transform coding approach and theshape-adaptive transform coding approach. The former fills the uncovered area with the optimal redundant data such that the resulting transform spectrum is compact. A simple but efficient mirror image extension technique is proposed. Once augmented into full image blocks, these boundary blocks can be processed by traditional block-based transform techniques like the popular discrete cosine transform (DCT). In the second approach, we change either the transform basis or the coefficient calculation process adaptively based on the shape of the AS image segment. We propose an efficientshape-projected problem formulation to reduce the dimension of the problem. Existing coding algorithms, such as the orthogonal transform by Gilge [5] and the iterative coding by Kaup and Aach [6], can be interpreted intuitively. We also propose a new adaptive transform based on the same principle as that used in deriving the DCT from the optimal Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT). We analyze the tradeoff relationship between compression performance, computational complexity, and codec complexity for different coding schemes. Simulation results show that complicated algorithms (e.g., iterative, adaptive) can improve the quality by 5–10 dB at some computational or hardware cost. Alternatively, the simple mirror image extension technique improves the quality by 3–4 dB without any overheads. The contributions of this paper lie in efficient problem formulations, new transform coding techniques, and numerical tradeoff analyses.     

Software‐processed edge‐ and level‐adaptive overdrive (SELAO) method for high‐quality motion pictures

Abstract— In this paper, a software‐processed edge‐ and level‐adaptive overdrive (SELAO) method, which is a novel overdrive technique that utilizes not only a temporal change of gray levels but also a spatial edge intensity of motion pictures, is proposed. The SELAO method is a software video‐processing technology to improve motion‐picture quality rendered on LCDs more than is possible with a conventional SLAO method without edge‐adaptive overdrive, and it works in real time on commonly used personal computers (PCs).     

Gray‐scale addressing method by multi‐order paraunitary/orthogonal building blocks

A new driving scheme for liquid‐crystal displays has been proposed, which uses paraunitary matrices as the diagonal building blocks. The new driving scheme has the advantages of lower hardware complexity than the well‐known MLA. In this paper, a new method is proposed for the implementation of gray scale in the recently proposed paraunitary driving scheme and the MLA. The method is based on multi‐order paraunitary/orthogonal building blocks, which strikes a balance between frame size and number of voltage levels.     

A perceived sharpness metric based on the luminance slope and overshoot of the motion‐induced edge‐blur profile

To reduce perceived motion blur on liquid crystal displays, typically various techniques such as overdrive, scanning backlight, black‐data insertion, black‐field insertion, and frame rate up‐conversion are widely employed by the liquid crystal display industry. These techniques aim to steepen the edge transitions by improving the dynamic behavior of the light modulation. However, depending on the implementation, this may result in the perception of irregularly shaped motion‐induced edge‐blur profiles. It is not yet fully understood how these irregularities in the steepened edge‐blur profiles contribute to the perceived sharpness of moving objects. To better understand the consequences of several motion‐blur reduction techniques, a perception experiment is designed to evaluate the perceived sharpness of typical motion‐induced edge‐blur profiles at several contrast levels. Relevant characteristics of these profiles are determined on the basis of the perception results by means of regression analysis. As a result, a sharpness metric with two parameters is established, where one parameter relates to the edge slope and the other to the overshoot/undershoot part of the motion‐induced edge‐blur profile.     

基于方向提升小波变换的多描述视频编码

提出一种基于方向提升小波变换的多描述可分级视频编码方法,该方法能增强视频编码的容错性和网络自适应性。对视频序列中的每一帧图像按梅花下采样产生2个子序列,对每个子序列分别进行三维小波可分级视频编码形成2个描述。为解决传统二维小波变换方法对梅花下采样图像编码效率低的问题,引入方向提升小波变换对图像进行空域分解,提出5模式方向提升小波变换以进一步提高编码效率。实验结果证明了该方法的有效性。     

Digital time‐modulation pixel memory circuit in LTPS technology

Abstract— A digital time‐modulation pixel memory circuit on glass substrate has been designed and verified for a 3‐μm low‐temperature polysilicon (LTPS) technology. From the experimental results, the proposed circuit can generate 4‐bit digital codes and the corresponding inversion data with a time‐modulation technique. While the liquid‐crystal‐display (LCD) panel operates in the still mode, which means the same image is displayed on the panel, a data driver for an LCD panel is not required to provide the image data of the frame by the proposed pixel memory circuit. This pixel memory circuit can store the frame data and generate its corresponding inversion data to refresh a static image without activating the data driver circuit. Therefore, the power consumption of a data driver can be reduced in the LCD panel.     

Multiresolution,perceptual and vector quantization based video codec

This paper presents a novel Multiresolution, Perceptual and Vector Quantization (MPVQ) based video coding scheme. In the intra-frame mode of operation, a wavelet transform is applied to the input frame and decorrelates it into its frequency subbands. The coefficients in each detail subband are pixel quantized using a uniform quantization factor divided by the perceptual weighting factor of that subband. The quantized coefficients are finally coded using a quadtree-coding algorithm. Perceptual weights are specifically calculated for the centre of each detail subband. In the inter-frame mode of operation, a Displaced Frame Difference (DFD) is first generated using an overlapped block motion estimation/compensation technique. A wavelet transform is then applied on the DFD and converts it into its frequency subbands. The detail subbands are finally vector quantized using an Adaptive Vector Quantization (AVQ) scheme. To evaluate the performance of the proposed codec, the proposed codec and the adaptive subband vector quantization coding scheme (ASVQ), which has been shown to outperform H.263 at all bitrates, were applied to six test sequences. Experimental results indicate that the proposed codec outperforms the ASVQ subjectively and objectively at all bit rates.     

面向CPU-GPU平台的HEVC编码器优化

针对CPU-GPU平台提供了一种能显著降低高效视频编码(high efficiency video coding,简称HEVC)复杂度的优化方案.根据编码器的复杂度分布及不同模块的特点,针对帧内预测、帧间预测以及环路滤波分别进行了优化.在帧内预测中,基于相邻编码单元(coding unit,简称CU)之间的相关性,提出了一种CU的深度决策方法以及一种减少率失真优化(RDO)的模式数量的方法,降低了帧内编码的复杂度.在帧间预测中,提出将耗时最大的运动估计模块完善在图形处理单元(GPU)上,通过中央处理单元(CPU)和GPU的流水线工作获得了明显的加速,并基于预测残差的能量提出了一种编码单元提前终止划分的方法,有效降低了帧间编码复杂度.在环路滤波中,提出了一种GPU端的自适应样本点补偿(sample adaptive offset,简称SAO)参数决策方法及去块滤波方法,有效分担了CPU端的复杂度.上述优化实现在HM16.2上,实验结果表明,提出的优化方案可以获得高达68%的编码复杂度节省,而平均性能损失仅为0.5%.     

基于整数变换的全零块判决方法

H．263中的运动搜索和变换域编码是运算量很大的部分，也是影响系统实时性能的瓶颈，为了减少图像编码的运算量，在采用整数变换代替浮点DCT变换的基础上，提出了一种全局判决方法，即在运动搜索中和变换前进行全零块判决。该方法是根据整数变换和量化结果为零的特点，在运动搜索中，对差值块先进行全零块判决，如果找到全零块，就停止搜索，以省却以后的搜索运算和全零块的整数变换以及相应的量化运算，由于其可在基本保持H．263原有编码算法图像质量的同时，减少运算量和缩短码流，从而大幅度提高了编码器的编码效率。     

多解析度自适应零块判决算法

在视频会议等应用中,视频编码的速度是保证系统实时性的关键.为了减小视频编码的运算量并提高系统的整体性能,提出了多解析度的自适应零块发现判决算法.多解析度通过对图像的子采样从而大幅度降低了搜索最佳匹配块的次数;而自适应的零块判决算法使得运动搜索速度收敛的更快,在不影响图像质量的前提下提高了编码的效率,并且减少了后续模块(DCT、量化等)所占用的时间.利用H.263算法进行了测试,结果显示在图像主客观质量基本不变的前提下,编码时间最多减少了近40%.     

A Very Low Bit Rate Video Coding Combined with Fast Adaptive Block Size Motion Estimation and Nonuniform Scalar Quantization Multiwavelet Transform

We describe a very low bit rate video coding framework in which motion correlation between successive video frames is exploited in the multiwavelet transform domain. Some complicated techniques, such as spatial prediction in intra coding, adaptive block size motion estimation, more than one previous frames for prediction in inter frames, and content adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) are used in H.26L standard. The testing results show that H.26L can greatly outperform MPEG-4 ASP in both PSNR and visual quality. However, the encoding of H.26L costs too much time for it is complex to use fast motion search in adaptive block size motion estimation, and CABAC needs much time to generate the code list for entropy coding. Whereas, only four types of symbol are generated after zero tree wavelet coding so that the entropy coding can cost less time than CABAC. Moreover, if we select 8× 8 sized block as a basic mode, which can be united into the large size mode if neighbored 8× 8 sized blocks have same reference frame and motion vector, then the fast motion estimation can be feasible. Accordingly, a fast motion search algorithm, multiwavelet transform, and a novel adaptive quantization schemer are applied to the proposed coding frame. Experimental results reveal 0.2–0.5 dB increase in coded PSNR at low bit rates over the state-of-the-art H.26L recommendation, and similar improvements over MPEG-4 at high bit rates, with a considerable improvement in subjective reconstruction quality, while simultaneously supporting a scalable representation.Jiazhong Chen was born in 1970. He received the M.S. degree in computation mathematics in 1999 and Ph.D. degree in computer system architecture in 2003 from HUST. He is now a lecturer at School of Computer science and technology of HUST. His main research interests include signal processing and wavelet analysis, image and video coding.Jingli Zhou was born in 1946. She received the B.E. degree in 1969. She is a Professor and doctor advisor at university of science and technology. She had been a visiting scholar in USA from 1995 to 1996 and has been honor of the State Department Special Allowance since 1999. Her main field of research: computer network and multimedia signal processing.Shengsheng Yu was born in 1944. Received the B.E. degree in 1967. He is a Professor and doctor advisor at university of science and technology. He had been a visiting scholar in west Germany from 1982 to 1983. His main field of research: computer network and storage, discrete signal processing and communication.Jun Xu was born in 1981. He received the B.S. degree from HUST, Wuhan, P. R. China, in 2003. He is now pursuing his M.S. degree in the School of Computer Science and Technology of HUST. His research interests are wavelet analysis, image compression and video processing and communications.     

基于颜色编码和图像隐写术的可逆灰度方法

针对现有方法存在合成灰度图像视觉质量欠佳、重建彩色图像还原度不足的问题,提出一种基于颜色编码和图像隐写术的可逆灰度方法。其利用可逆神经网络构建更高效的颜色编解码器,并引入密集卷积块和通道注意力机制进一步提升网络模型的性能,综合减少编解码过程中的颜色信息丢失。之后,为使灰度图像负载编码信息以及减小嵌入过程导致的图像失真,设计了一种基于修改方向的图像隐写算法,通过自适应权值参数选择,以接近最优的方式满足不同的嵌入容量需求,减少对灰度图像的修改。在Kodak和McMaster数据集上的实验表明,与现有代表性可逆灰度方法相比较,该方法能够生成质量更高的可逆灰度图像以及重建更加还原的彩色图像,在图像可视化时具有更好的视觉效果,在标准参考图像的相似性评价指标方面也取得了更优的性能。     

结合DCT与分形编码的自适应水印算法

提出并实现了一种结合DCT与分形编码的自适应水印算法.将宿主图像分成大小相同的不重叠方块,利用分形编码的拼贴误差对图像块进行分类,并构造原始宿主图像的二值特征标图,采用Arnold变换置乱二值特征标图和二值版权图标,再进行异或(XOR)运算得到隐秘水印.最后通过在子块DCT域中所选的三个中频系数的比较来完成隐秘水印的嵌入.实验表明,按该方法嵌入的水印具有良好的不可见性,也能较好抵抗高斯滤波、JPEG压缩、叠加噪声等处理.     

基于自适应GOP的三维提升小波视频编码技术

在三维提升视频编码框架中,视频运动场景切换时相邻视频帧之间的时间相关性将显著减弱,使得解码视频图像在场景切换处质量急剧下降.针对这一问题,提出了一种新的基于视频亮度分量的场景切换检测方法,并根据场景切换自适应分配图像组(groupof picture GOP)大小.实验结果表明,该自适应分配GOP策略有效提高了三维提升小波视频图像的编解码质量,降低了场景切换对视频编码的影响.     

Block truncation coding using pattern fitting

Block truncation coding (BTC) divides an image into blocks having given size and then encodes each block by two representative gray levels and a bit-pattern. In this work a modified scheme of BTC is proposed where the computed representative gray levels are the bias and the contrast in each block. Secondly, instead of determining bit-pattern for each block, an optimum bit-pattern is selected from a pattern-book. Thus the index of the optimum pattern is used to encode in lieu of the explicit pattern. Thirdly, if the contrast is low the block is assumed to be smooth and bit-pattern is not required to reconstruct the block. This leads to significant reduction in bit-rate (bpp). Finally, the contrast component and the predictive residual of the bias component are entropy coded to achieve further reduction in bpp. Performance of the proposed scheme is measured in terms of peak-signal-to-noise ratio and bpp, and is compared with other recently reported methods.     

An oblivious fragile watermarking scheme for images utilizing edge transitions in BTC bitmaps

As one of the famous block-based image coding schemes,block truncation coding(BTC) has been also applied in digital watermarking.Previous BTC-based watermarking or hiding schemes usually embed secret data by modifying the BTC encoding stage or BTC-compressed data,obtaining the watermarked image with poorer quality than the BTC-compressed version.This paper presents a new oblivious image watermarking scheme by exploiting BTC bitmaps.Unlike the traditional schemes,our approach does not really perform the BTC compression on images during the embedding process but utilizes the parity of the number of horizontal edge transitions in each BTC bitmap to guide the watermark embedding and extraction processes.The embedding process starts by partitioning the original cover image into non-overlapping 4×4 blocks and performing BTC on each block to obtain its BTC bitmap.One watermark bit is embedded in each block by modifying at most three pixel values in the block to make sure that the parity of the number of horizontal edge transitions in the bitmap of the modified block is equal to the embedded watermark bit.In the extraction stage,the suspicious image is first partitioned into non-overlapping 4×4 blocks and BTC is performed on each block to obtain its bitmap.Then,by checking the parity of the number of horizontal edge transitions in the bitmap,we can extract one watermark bit in each block.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed watermarking scheme is fragile to various image processing operations while keeping the transparency very well.     

频率域Wyner-Ziv视频编码算法的改进

为提高分布式视频编码压缩率,依据无线传感网络终端设备及Wyner-Ziv视频编码特点,针对Bernd Girod的频域Wyner-Ziv视频编码方案提出改进算法。该算法在编码端通过简单DCT运算提出将图像块分为Skip模式、低频模式和全频模式三种可选模式,在解码端根据相应的编码模式分别选择平均插值、自适应搜索运动估计插值和自适应搜索精细运动估计插值的边信息估算方法联合解码。该算法既能通过消除大量的帧间预测与熵编码实现低码率传输,又能以最小的解码代价获得更精确的边信息,从而有效地避免图像解码质量下降。实验结果表明,在相同峰值信噪比情况下,该算法的码率比Bernd Girod提出的频域Wyner-Ziv算法平均下降40%。