Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision 10, 269279 (1999)

c 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Adaptive Fractal Image Sequence Coding by Variable Shape Decomposition
HER-CHANG CHAO AND BIN-CHANG CHIEU
Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology,
Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Abstract. A two-phase fractal image sequence compression system is proposed. In the classication phase,
according to the texture attribution a testing solid image block is assigned to its corresponding texture class. The
texture attributionis derivedfromthe tomographic blockprojectionclassicationfor the nite projectiondirections at
the three-dimensional (3D) space. In the adaptive coding phase, both the algorithmof the 3Dprojection classication
and the 3D variable shape decomposition are incorporated into the variable shape block transformation for image
sequence. By applying this variable shape block transformation algorithmto fractal image sequence coding scheme,
we can obtain a promising performance.
Keywords: fractal image sequence coding, variable shape decomposition, variable shape block, computerized
tomographic image reconstruction, projection classication algorithm
1. Introduction
Source coding for stripping redundancy from typical
highly correlated sources like speech and image wave-
forms have been studied extensively. Some popular
techniques addressed in the literature include vector
quantization (VQ), linear predictive coding, linear
transform coding (like the DCT), subband coding as
well as various hybrid combinations of these. Recently,
many researchers have investigated and developed new
compression methods, such as second generation im-
age coding [1] and fractal image coding [2]. Because of
the image quality versus transmitting bit rate of fractal
image coding rivals that of classical image compres-
sion techniques, fractal image coding has attracted a
great deal of attention [37].
The basic concept of fractal image coding is to repre-
sent an image by using a transformation to generate it.
One of major assignments of fractal image coding is to
nd such a transformation that can compactly describe
the image and achieve a certain amount of data com-
pression. Since the idea of fractal image coding was
rst presented by Barnsley [2, 8], several approaches
have been published [916]. They are mainly divided
into two fractal models. One is the self-transformation
system (STS) which maps a block of an image to each
part of it. Barnsley rst presented the idea of the STS
model that is called iterated function system (IFS), and
the IFS is mainly applied to the compression of graphic
images. The other is the piecewise transformation sys-
tem (PTS), which maps a block of an image to other
block. Fractal block-based coding algorithm based on
the PTS model has been rst introduced by Jacquin [8]
for the natural images, where a partitioned block rather
than the whole image is used as an entire function. Of
course, the same ideas are applicable to the modeling
of m-dimensional (m-D) signals.
In this paper, we adopt and extend the computer-
ized tomographic image reconstruction skill [1719]
to classify the 3D solid image blocks, i.e., on all these
solid image blocks, the unidirectional reconstruction
scheme is employed to estimate the directions of tex-
ture of the solid image blocks. Under this approach, a
reconstructed solid image block is obtained for each di-
rection. Unidirectional reconstruction of a solid image
block is obtained by repeating a 2D projection array
data along the directions of projections. Once one of
several solid image blocks is reconstructed along dif-
ferent directions, the solid image block giving the min-
imum distortion is chosen as the nal reconstructed
solid image block. If a solid image block contains a
texture alongsome direction, thenthe solidimage block
270 Chao and Chieu
reconstructed fromthe projection data along that direc-
tion generates minimumreconstruction error. When the
direction of texture of the solid image block is found,
we could consider the possibility of incorporating this
projection classication skill into the variable shape
block-based transformation for fractal image sequence
coding with the purpose of reducing the transmitting
bit rate and preserving the decoded image quality.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briey
reviews the mathematical background of the fractal
block-based image coding and the basic computerized
tomographic image reconstructiontheory. InSection3,
we propose a novel adaptive fractal image sequence
coding system by employing the 3D projection classi-
cation algorithmand the 3Dvariable shape decompo-
sition algorithm. Section 4 presents the computer sim-
ulation result of the proposed coding system. Finally,
concluding remarks are given in Section 5.
2. Background
Fractal image coding utilizes the self-similarity of an
input image. In the following subsections, we will
overview the fractal image coding algorithm based on
the IFS and the tomographic image reconstructed from
projections.
2.1. The Fractal Block-Based Image Coding
The main characteristics of fractal block-based image
coding [3] are: (1) it relies on the assumption that im-
age redundancy can be efciently exploited through
self-transformability on a block-wise basis, and (2) it
approximates an original image by a fractal image.
The fractal block-based coding is based on the IFS
and the Collage theorem [2]. Barnsley proposed a set
of afne transformations that can perform rotations,
translations, and scaling. A mapping w
i
: X X, for
i =1, . . . , N, dened in a complete metric space (X, d)
is calledcontractive, if there is a real number 0 s
i
< 1
satises
d(w
i
(x), w
i
(y)) s
i
d(x, y), x, y X. (1)
Here X and d denote the space and its corresponding
metric, respectively. N represents the total number of
contractive. The real number s
i
is called the contractiv-
ity factor of w
i
. Let F(X) represents the space whose
elements are from the compact subset of X. A W is
dened by
W(U) =
N
_
i =1
w
i
(U). (2)
Here U is a given original image, U F(X). The com-
bination of the nite set of contractive is called IFS
W withcontractivityfactor s = max{s
i
: i =1, . . . , N}.
Additionally, the Collage theorem is described as fol-
lows.
The Collage Theorem. Let a given image U F(X)
and a given constant 0, where F(X) is a non-empty
space. Choose an IFS with contractivity 0 s < 1 so
that d(U, W(U)) , then
d(U, A
u
)
d(U, W(U))
1 s
, (3)
in which d() denotes the Hausdorff distance [8] and
A
u
is a stable image that is a unique attractor of the
IFS. This means that, for a given image U, if we can
nd an IFS which generates an image sufciently close
to U, then the attractor of the IFS will also be close
to U. For image coding, U is the original image that
we want to encode, and W(U) is the code of the U
that we want to nd. The attractor, A
u
, is the decoded
image with a general form
lim
j
W
j
(T) = A
u
, T F(X), (4)
where W
j
denotes the j th iteration of W.
The difference between the original image U and
the decoded image A
u
depends on s and according to
the Collage theorem. Since the decoded image is not
an identical copy of the original image, and W has a
lower complexity than the original image, W thus can
be regarded as a losing image coding for U. Accord-
ing to the Collage theorem, Jacquin developed fractal
block-based image coding [3]. The idea is as follows.
To encode an image U, we divide the image into square
range blocks R
i
, i = 1, . . . , N
R
, in order that the range
blocks cover the whole image and they do not overlap.
That is, U =

N
i =1
R
i
, and R
i
R
j
= {}, i = j . The
image U is also divided into larger blocks called do-
main blocks D
k
, k = 1, . . . , N
D
, which can overlap.
For each range block R
i
, we search for a matching
domain block D
k
among all the domain blocks in or-
der that the transformed D
k
with a contractive trans-
form w
i
is similar to R
i
, that is, w
i
(D
k
) R
i
and
d(R
i
, w
i
(D
k
)) is as small as possible. The combina-
tion of w
i
, i = 1, . . . , N
R
, is called partitioned IFS
Adaptive Fractal Image Sequence Coding 271
(PIFS) W [7]. In the decoding process, as long as W is
contractive, the repetitive application of W to arbitrary
image will result in a stable image. If W
j
(T) is close
to U, the stable image will be close to the original im-
age. We can get the stable decoded image, as shown in
Eq. (4), if the following situation occurs:
d
_
W
j
(T), W
( j 1)
(T)
_
c

, (5)
in which c

is a predetermined threshold.
In the implementation of the image or image se-
quence coding, we usually use the mean square error
(MSE) as a distortion measure. For our application, the
MSE between two image sequence blocks U and V is
dened as
d
mse
(U, V) = E[(U(x, y, t ) V(x, y, t ))
2
], (6)
where E denotes the mean operator.
2.2. The Computerized Tomographic
Image Reconstruction
Figure 1 illustrates the basic projection concept, in
which a linear transformation is dened as
P

(z) P(z, ) =
_
ray AB
f (x, y) ds,
< z < , 0 < , (7)
where (z, ) represents the coordinates of the AB ray
[17] relative to the object, line AB is the path of the
ray, s is the distance along line AB, and f (x, y) is
a 2D spatial function (image). The image reconstruc-
tion problem is to determine f (x, y) from P

(z). For a
digital image, the integral value can be rewritten as the
Figure 1. The projection of a 2D spatial function (image).
summation of projection
p

(z) =
N
z

i =1
f
i,z
, z = 1, 2, . . . , Z, (8)
where f
i,z
and N
z
denote the gray-level from the i th
pixel and the total number of pixels of the zth ray,
respectively. Z is the total number of rays. The theory
of reconstructing an image from its projection values
can be found in [18].
3. The Adaptive Fractal Image Sequence
Coding Scheme
The major elements of our proposed adaptive frac-
tal image sequence coding technique are discussed in
this section. It includes solid image block classica-
tion scheme based on the algorithm of 3D projection
classication and adaptive fractal image sequence cod-
ing technique by the 3D variable shape decomposition
algorithm. The classication algorithm is derived and
extended from the computerized tomographic recon-
struction skill.
3.1. The 3D Projection Classication Algorithm
For a n n n (n >1) solid image block Q, we could
dene the projection directions Ray(, ), , =0

,
45

, 90

, 135

, to classify the solid image block by us-

ing the computerized tomographic image reconstruc-
tion skill as shown in Fig. 2. However, the projection
directions Ray(, 0

), = 0

, 45

, 90

, 135

, is of
equivalence. Therefore, the total number of the pro-
jection directions is 13.
A set of 2D projection array data can be obtained
by averaging gray-levels along the thirteen directions.
The 2D projection array data P
l
and the unidirectional
Figure 2. A n n n solid image block Q, where a, b, . . . , h are
corners of Q.
272 Chao and Chieu
reconstructed solid image block

Q
l
, which is made by
back projecting P
l
, along the l direction are dened as
P
l
= project
l
(Q) and

Q
l
= backproject
l
(P
l
), respec-
tively, where l belongs to one of the 13 projection di-
rections. The concept can be implemented by using the
following formulae. For the reason of space saving, we
only list three projection formulae. The formulae not
listed are similar to those formulae listed below.
P
Ray(90

,90

)
(i, j ) =
1
n
n1

k=0
Q(i, j, k),
for i, j = 0, . . . , n 1. (9.a)

Q
Ray(90

,90

)
(i, j, k) = P
Ray(90

,90

)
(i, j ),
for i, j, k =0, . . . , n 1. (9.b)
P
Ray(45

,45

)
(i, j )
=
_

_
1
j +1
j

k=0
Q(k, j k, i k),
for j = 0, . . . , n 1 and i = j, . . . , n 1
1
i +1
i

k=0
Q(k, j k, i k),
for i = 0, . . . , n 2
and j = i +1, . . . , n 1
1
i j +n
n1+i j

k=0
Q(i k, j i +k, k),
for i = 1, . . . , n 1
and j = n, . . . , n 1 +i
1
j +1
j

k=0
Q(i +k n +1, j k, n 1 k),
for i = n, . . . , 2n 2
and j = 0, . . . , 2n 2 i
1
2n 1 i
2n2i

k=0
Q(n 1 k, i + j +k 2n
+2, i +k n +1),
for n > 2, i = n +1, . . . , 2n 2,
j = 2n 1 i, . . . , n 2
1
3n 2 i j
3n3i j

k=0
Q(i + j +k 2n
+2, n 1 k, 2n 2 j k),
for i = n, . . . , 2n 2
and j = n 1, . . . , 3n 3 i
0, otherwise
(10.a)

Q
Ray(45

,45

)
(i, j, k)
=
_

_
P
Ray(45

,45

)
(i +k, i + j ),
for j, k = 0, . . . , n 1
and i = 0, . . . , n 1 k
P
Ray(45

,45

)
(i +k, j k +n 1),
for k = 1, . . . , n 1, i = n k, . . . , n 1
and j = 0, . . . , n 1
(10.b)
P
Ray(135

,90

)
(i, j )
=
_

_
1
i +1
i

k=0
Q(i k, j, n 1 k),
for i, j = 0, . . . , n 1
1
2n 1 i
2n2i

k=0
Q(n 1 k, j,
2n 2 i k),
for i = n, . . . , 2n 2, j = 0, . . . , n 1
(11.a)

Q
Ray(135

,90

)
(i, j, k) = P
Ray(135

,90

)
(n 1 +i k, j ),
for i, j, k = 0, . . . , n 1 (11.b)
As a remark, Q() and

Q
l
() denote the gray-levels of
Q and

Q
l
, respectively. P
l
() are obtained integers by
rounding. Both the total equations for projection and
backprojection are 13. Atypical example of projection
and backprojection operation is shown in Fig. 3 by
using (9.a) and (9.b), respectively.
With the above knowledge, we are able to dene a
3D projection classication algorithm as follows:
(1) A solid image block has the smooth class if all
the MSEs between Q and

Q
l
are smaller than a
threshold t
s
.
(2) A simple texture class solid image block has the
smallest MSE between Q and

Q
l
. Moreover, the
Figure 3. A typical example of projection and backprojection op-
eration.
Adaptive Fractal Image Sequence Coding 273
smallest MSE is smaller than a threshold t
e
as
well.
(3) Otherwise, the solid image block is classied to
the mixed texture class solid image block.
In practical applications, t
e
is larger than t
s
. By using
the above algorithm, we may have 15 classes (13 sim-
ple texture classes, one mixed texture class, and one
smooth class) to be classied. All these classied tex-
tures can be viewed as the attributions for the solid
image blocks.
3.2. The 3D Variable Shape
Decomposition Algorithm
In this subsection, we will describe how to incorpo-
rate the projection classication algorithminto variable
shape solid image block transformation.
For the reason of computation complexity, the test-
ing image sequences are arranged as several non-
overlappings regular 3D testing image sequence block
sequentially. For a testing image sequence block U,
we can divide U into non-overlapping solid range
block R
i
of size N N (N/2), i = 1, . . . , N
R
. N
R
denotes the total number of the solid range blocks in
U and N is even number. The solid range block is
rst split into four non-overlapping subblocks having
size (N/2) (N/2) (N/2), as shown in Fig. 4. We
employ the 3D projection classication algorithm to
estimate the attribution of the four subblocks. By com-
paring the attribution of the four subblocks, a conven-
tional merging rule is proposed to merge the subblocks
which hold the same attributions. As shown in Fig. 4,
we can get one of the 15 possible merging patterns. A
close observation on Fig. 4 concludes that the 10 shape
Figure 4. Four subblocks can be merged to 15 possible merging
patterns.
Figure 5. Ten shape components.
components in Fig. 5 can morphologically describe
all of the 15 forms of the merging patterns. In other
words, any solid range block can be dened by these
10 shape components as well as the 15 merging pat-
terns. The corresponding merging pattern, shape com-
ponents, and attribution of shape component are the
necessary information for searching algorithm design
when the fractal encoding is proceeded. The searching
algorithm will be presented in next subsection.
For any i th solid range block R
i
, we may have at
most four associated individual shape components. By
indexing the associated individual shape components
clockwise with an integer j , we are able to dene the
shape components of solid range block as R
m
i, j
which
will be used in the searching algorithm design. Here
m denotes the mth shape component, m = 0, 1, . . . , 9,
and j 0, 1, 2, 3. The above procedure of producing
R
m
i, j
from R
i
is named as the 3Dvariable shape decom-
position algorithm.
For the searching space, the testing image sequence
block U is also divided into N
D
m
overlapable solid
domain blocks that can be indexed as D
m
k
m
, k
m
=1,
. . . , N
D
m
, according to which mth shape component of
the shape component of solid range block is referring.
Here referring means that the solid domain blocks are
selected to have the same shape as the referring shape
component but the size of selected blocks is larger.
The projection classication algorithm is followed to
classify each solid domain block into its correspond-
ing attribution. Using this procedure, we could create
a class pool C
m
A
in accordance with the referred mth
shape component and the attribution A of the solid do-
main block, where A belongs to one of the 15 classes.
Apparently, the total number of class pool is 150. All
the class pools are served to create the total class
pool, C, of solid domain block within our proposed
searching algorithm except those 10 smooth class
pools.
274 Chao and Chieu
3.3. The Adaptive Fractal Image Sequence
Encoding and Decoding
The variable shape contractive transformation w
m
i, j
for
R
m
i, j
is , where , , and are spatial contrac-
tion, gray-level permutation, and massic transforma-
tion, respectively. , , and are proposed as follows.
Spatial Contraction (). The spatial contraction ()
shrinks the solid domain block D
m

k
m

to the size of
the R
m
i, j
and translates the solid domain block D
m

k
m

to
the position of the R
m
i, j
, where m

may not be equal

to m. The () locating at (x + p, y + q, t + r),
(D
m

k
m

)
x+p,y+q,t +r
, is the average gray-level value of
adjacent
x

y

t
pixels in D
m

k
m

. We formulate it
as follow:

_
D
m

k
m

_
x+p,y+q,t +r
=
1

x
1

i =0

y
1

j =0

t
1

k=0
f (x + p
x
+i, y +q
y
+ j, t +r
t
+k), (12)
Figure 6. Thirty-three gray-level permutations for shape-9, where a, b, . . . , and h are positions of eight corners of the original solid image
block.
where (x, y, t ) and f () denote the starting position
and gray-levels of pixel of the D
m

k
m

. In general,
x
,
y
,
and
t
are set to be natural numbers.
Gray-Level Permutation (). () principally per-
forms rotations and reections on the output of the
(D
m

k
m

). The shape and attribution of the output of

((D
m

k
m

)) must be the same as that of the R

m
i, j
. Atypi-
cal example of the gray-level permutation (for shape-9
solid image block) is shown in Fig. 6. Obviously, there
are 33 gray-level permutations. As a remark, for other
shape components, we only use part of the 33 gray-
level permutations. The shape-5 and shape-6 solid im-
age blocks have 22 gray-level permutations and the
others (except the shape-9 solid image block) have 13
gray-level permutations. Instead of using the notation
(), we would like to introduce
v
(), v 0, . . . , 32,
to present gray-level permutation.
Massic Transformation(). The massic transforma-
tion () is a transformation that processes
v
((D
m

k
m

))
in order that the contrast and brightness of
v
((D
m

k
m

))
are similar to those of the R
m
i, j
. Let be the scal-
ing factor and denotes the brightness offset, the
Adaptive Fractal Image Sequence Coding 275
transformation () can be dened as

v
_

_
D
m

k
m

___
=
v
_

_
D
m

k
m

__
+. (13)
Given two blocks H R
m
i, j
and G
v
((D
m

k
m

)), we
can nd
=
E[H G] E[H] E[G]
E[G
2
] (E[G])
2
=
Cov(H, G)
Var(G)
(14)
and
= E[H] E[G] (15)
by using (6), (13), and the least square rule. Var() and
Cov() are the variance operator and the covariance
operator, respectively. If G H, (14) can be given by
=
Cov(H, G H)
Var(G)

=
Var(H)
Var(G)
. (16)
If the attribution of R
m
i, j
belongs to the smooth
class, then Var(H)

=0,

=0, and

= E[H]. On the
contrary, if the attribution of R
m
i, j
belongs to ano-
ther texture classes, we choose {0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5,
0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9} which is the same as that in [3].
We nowpropose a searching algorithmto nd a con-
stractive transformation w
m
i, j
for the encoding of R
m
i, j
.
The w
m
i, j
searching algorithm is given as follows.
Searching Algorithm
For the encoding of R
m
i, j
.
If the attribution of the R
m
i, j
is smooth,
Calculate the mean value E[R
m
i, j
] and let the pa-
rameters of w
m
i, j
include both E[R
m
i, j
] and the attri-
bution of the R
m
i, j
.
else /

the attribution of the R

m
i, j
belongs to a simple
or mixed texture

/
Search a solid domain block D
m

k
m

from the to-

tal class pool C in order that the shape and the
attribution of (D
m

k
m

) are the same as that of the

R
m
i, j
by gray-level permutation
v
((D
m

k
m

)).
Moreover, the d
mse
(R
m
i, j
, (
v
((D
m

k
m

)))) must
have a minimal distortion. The parameters of w
m
i, j
should include the starting position of D
m

k
m

,
v
(),
, , and the attribution of the R
m
i, j
.
End of Searching Algorithm
The encoding algorithm of a testing image sequence
block is summarized as follows.
Encoding Algorithm
1. A testing image sequence block U is applied as an
input.
2. Partition the testing image sequence block U to the
corresponding solid domain blocks D
m
k
m
. For each
D
m
k
m
, apply the projection classication algorithmto
create the total class pool C.
3. The testing image sequence block U is divided to
non-overlapping N N (N/2) solid range blocks
R
i
, i = 1, . . . , N
R
.
4. For each solid range blocks R
i
, i = 1, . . . , N
R
,
(a) Apply the 3D projection classication algo-
rithm and the 3D variable shape decomposition
algorithm to create one of the fteen possible
merging patterns.
For the encoding of R
m
i, j
,
Do the w
m
i, j
searching algorithm.
(b) Store the form of the merging pattern of the R
i
and all parameters of the w
m
i, j
.
End of Encoding Algorithm
The decoding algorithm of a testing image seq-
uence block can be described by the following proce-
dure.
Decoding Algorithm
1. Initialize an arbitrary image sequence block V.
2. Assign the iteration number, k, to be 0.
3. Do
(a) Calculate a new fractal image sequence block

V by

all of R
m
i, j
w
m
i, j
().
(b) k = k +1.
(c) Replace V by the new fractal image sequence
block

V, until d
mse
(V,

V) c

. c

is an error
bound.
End of Decoding Algorithm
4. Simulation Result
By applying the above algorithms to each testing im-
age sequence block sequentially, we performcomputer
simulation of the original image sequences of sales-
man. There are 64 (#0 to #63) frames in this testing
image sequence and each frame has spatial resolution
of 360288 pixels with 8 bits gray-level for each pixel.
276 Chao and Chieu
Figure 7. The original eight frames (#8 to #15) of salesman.
Each testing image sequence block U is assigned to
have eight frames, and the original eight frames (#8 to
#15) of salesman are displayed in Fig. 7. We employ
the 3D projection classication algorithm and the 3D
variable shape decomposition algorithm to the adap-
tive fractal image sequence coding for each testing im-
age sequence block. Let the size of R
i
is 8 8 4
and
x
=
y
=
t
=2. The values for t
s
and t
e
are 20
and 36, respectively. Three bits are required for scal-
ing factor of each texture block, and each brightness
offset requires 8 bits. Because the shift along x and y
axial direction for the overlapping solid domain blocks
are 4-pixel per step, () requires 13 bits to represent
the place of the solid domain blocks of the testing im-
age sequence block U. We need one bit to represent the
attribution (smooth or texture class) of the R
m
i, j
.
Let n

, n

, n

v
, n

, n
E
, and n
A
, denote the number
of bits for , ,
v
, , the mean value of the pixels in
the smooth block, and the attribution of shape compo-
nent, respectively. From previous discussion, we know
that the required bits for encoding w
m
i, j
, n
w
m
i, j
, can be
summarized as follows:
Adaptive Fractal Image Sequence Coding 277
Figure 8. The decoded frames (#8 to #15) from salesman at the tenth reconstructed iteration.
(1) n
w
m
i, j
= n
A
+n
E
= 1 +8 = 9 (bits), if the attribu-
tion of R
m
i, j
is smooth.
(2) n
w
m
i, j
= n
A
+n

+n

+n

v
+n

= 1 +13 +3 +
n

v
+8 = 25 +n

v
(bits), if the attribution of R
m
i, j
is not smooth, in which
n

m
v
_

_
6, for the case that R
m
i, j
is a shape-9
solid image block,
5, for the case that R
m
i, j
is a shape-5
or shape-6 solid image block,
4, otherwise.
(17)
The required average bit rate (BR) for each decoded
image sequence block can be calculated by using
BR =

all of R
m
i,j
n
w
m
i, j
+

N
R
i =1
n
R
i
360 288 8
(bits/pixel). (18)
n
R
i
requires four bits to accommodate the classication
of the merging patterns into 15 forms. The peak sig-
nal to noise ratio (PSNR
t
) of t th frame of the decoded
278 Chao and Chieu
Figure 9. Curves for salesman: (a) curve of PSNR and (b) curve of
BR.
image sequence is dened by
PSNR
t
= 10 log
_
255
2
d
mse
(K
t
, L
t
)
_
(dB), (19)
where K
t
and L
t
denote the t th frame of the origi-
nal image sequence and decoded image sequence, re-
spectively. The decoded image sequence (#8 to #15)
of salesman by the adaptive fractal image sequence
coding technique are displayed in Fig. 8. The curve of
PSNRs and BRs for the adaptive fractal image sequence
coding are shown in Figs. 9(a) and (b), respectively.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, we have described a new image sequence
classication scheme which is based on the 3D pro-
jection algorithm to estimate the texture attribution of
the image sequence block. We have also adopted the
3D variable shape decomposition skill, the projection
classication algorithm, and the fractal coding tech-
nique to form the new image sequence coding scheme.
It is a general phenomenon that the decoded image
sequence quality and the transmitting bit rate depend
on the choice of size of the solid block, block shape,
and block characteristics. An adaptive algorithm to al-
locate all these factors in a proper way is thus necessary.
In the fractal coding setup, we propose the projection
classication algorithm to encode variable shape. A
better trade-off between the image quality and trans-
mitting bit rate is obtained. From this study we have
the following conclusions:
(1) In our coding scheme, we use a solid range block
with xed size and we restrain the size to 884.
This choice is due to the trade-off between the im-
age quality and transmitting bit rate. For a larger
solid range block, the bit rate can be reduced
whereas the image quality is downgraded. On the
contrary, for a smaller solid image block, the im-
age quality can be improved however the bit rate
is increased.
(2) For the 9th shape components, we will have 33
gray-level permutations. We may neglect a gray-
level permutation that seldom occurs in order to
reduce the bit rate. Therefore, it only needs ve
bits to characterize the information for encoding.
(3) Further improvement of the proposed image se-
quence coding systembetween the transmitting bit
rate and the image sequence quality may be ex-
pected if the wavelet decomposition (or parallel
processing) is used. This is also our future research
topic.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to express the most grateful
acknowledgments to the National Science Council of
the R.O.C. for the nancial support under the contract
number NSC-87-2213-E011-032.
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Her-ChangChaowas borninTaoyuan, TaiwanonOctober 25, 1964.
He received the S.B. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Electronic Engineer-
ing, from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology,
Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, in 1991 and 1998, respectively. Presently he
is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electronic Engineer-
ing, VanNungInstitute of Technology, Chung-Li, Tao-Yuan, Taiwan,
ROC. His research interests are in the area of image processing, digi-
tal lter design, wavelet transforms, computer vision, and neural
networks.
Bin-Chang Chieu received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineer-
ing from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA, in 1989.
He is now Professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering,
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei,
Taiwan, ROC. His current research interests are in image processing,
digital signal processing, neural networks, and computer vision.