Hierarchical prediction structure for subimage coding and multithreaded parallel implementation in integral imaging

We are concerned with the coding of subimage-transformed elemental images to solve the problems of data transmission and storage in three-dimensional (3D) integral imaging in this paper. First, we use the subimage transform for preprocessing of the elemental image array (EIA). Because of the similarity of correlation distributions between the subimage array (SIA) and multiview video, we present a hierarchical prediction structure for SIA coding based on the hierarchical B picture (HBP) structure for multiview video coding. Moreover, we design a multithreaded parallel implementation for the proposed structure according to inter-row prediction dependencies. Experiments are performed on both EIAs and SIAs. The results show that employing the same coding strategy, the proposed parallel implemented HBP scheme achieves not only higher image quality and better 3D effect but also lower coding delay at low bit rates compared with the previously reported Hilbert-curve-based scheme.