ICSES 2008 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SIGNALS AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS

KRAKÓW, SEPTEMBER 14-17, 2008

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Implementation of a Modified Wavelet based

Video Compression on a ADSP Blackfin 533
Processor for Medical Imaging Applications
K. V. Sridhar, Prof. K. S. R. Krishna Prasad
Dept. of ECE,
National Institute of Technology, Warangal (A.P) - INDIA
spgj9@yahoo.co.in

Abstract-Three-dimensional (3-D) subband/ wavelet coding II. SECTION I

via a Motion Compensated Temporal Filter (MCTF) is
emerging as a very effective structure for highly scalable A. ew scheme
video coding. In this paper, a low bit rate video coding
In this scheme, we implemented the Haar and Le Gall
system based on three dimensional (3-D) wavelet coding
using longer filters (Le Gall 5/3, 9/7) is implemented for
5/3 transform for Motion compensation temporal filtering
Telemedicine imaging applications. In addition, a new (MCTF) at integer pixel resolution separately using lifting
scheme for finding the motion vectors (MV) is proposed and scheme. The basic block diagram in our scheme is shown
through several experimental results, it has been observed in Fig 1.Here the Hierarchical Variable sized Block based
that it outperforms H.264 base line profile in terms of PS
R. Motion compensation (HVSBMC), starting from a block
size of 16*16 to 4*4 having all possible modes in between
Key words: 3D wavelets, Longer filters, MCTF, H.264 them are considered.
baseline profile

I. INTRODUCTION
All the existing video compression standards are based
on the hybrid scheme of the Motion compensation (MC)
and the discrete cosine transform (DCT). The latest video
compression standard H.264 provides better compression
than the previous standards. In this standard, the hybrid
scheme is fully optimized and there is no point to exploit it
further [2].
With emerging wireless and mobile applications, there Fig. 1 Wavalet based video compression scheme

has been considerable amount of research in the area of For the implementation of MCTF, it is required to find
the Medical video compression at very low bit rates in the motion vectors (MV), while a Haar transform requires
particular, Telemedicine applications. The high bit rates MV for every frame pair. In case of Le Gall 5/3 transform
that result form the various types of digital video make implementation, MV is required for every consecutive
their transmission through their intended channels very frame which is twice in number as that of Haar [1]. But in
difficult. Therefore there is a need for the video our proposed scheme, we used only one MV and obtained
the backward MV as the opposite sign of the first one. For
compression.Wavelet based video technique has recently
small search range, the MV between the frames can be
received much attention and provides good competitor for considered to be linear. The Le Gall 5/3 transform is
Hybrid Scheme (MC/DCT). Compared to DCT of size 4*4 implemented using the following lifting steps [3][8].
or 8*8, a multi level spatial wavelet transform is more
Ht[m, n] = X2t−1[m, n] Ѹ 0.5( X2t[m Ѹ dm, n Ѹ dn] + X2t−2[m Ѹ
effective in removing the spatial redundancy, especially
bm, n Ѹ bn]).
for videos of high spatial resolution. This paper is
organized as follows: Section I describes the proposed Lt[m, n] = X2t[m, n] + 0.25(Ht+1[m Ѹ dm, n Ѹ dn] +Ht[m Ѹ
scheme and the traditional scheme of implementation of bm, n Ѹ bn]),
longer filters for MCTF with results and Section II where Lt and Ht are the temporal low and temporal high
describes Conclusions & future scope. subbands and X2t, X2t-1, X2t-2 are the input frames.

Copyright © 2008 by Department of Electronics, AGH University of Science and Technology 243
 M EDICAL A PPLICATIONS

After MCTF, a 2D spatial lifting based wavelet transform TABLE II

is implemented by performing 1D transform along columns USING 5/3 FOR MCTF AND 2D 5/3 FOR A THRESHOLD OF (40, 2)
first and 1D transform along rows [2]. Quantization of the
wavelet coefficients is performed by setting the threshold Sequence (256*256) Mean CR MeanPSNR (dB)
for different frames. The total Compression ratio (CR) is
calculated as the average CR of individual frames per Sequence_1 1980 27.65
Group of picture (GOP). The reconstruction path is also
shown in Fig.1 and the total PSNR is calculated as the Sequence_2 461.3 35.17
average PSNR of the individual frames per GOP. A
Sequence_3 67.33 31.23
uniform quantization (threshold) is applied commonly to all
the predicted frames and a different uniform quantization
Sequence_4 21.32 30.47
for all the average frames. For implementation we
considered a search range of +/-2 pixels and GOP of size 8
frames. For H.264 baseline profile, we considered only one
reference picture for inter frame prediction at integer pixel TABLE III
resolution, considering each I- frame followed by seven P- USING HAAR FOR MCTF AND 2D 5/3 FOR A THRESHOLD OF (40, 2)
frames [6] [7]. A performance comparison is brought out
and tabulated as shown in the table 1 to 4 by considering Sequence (256*256) Mean CR MeanPSNR (dB)
different thresholds for various possible cases such as
Sequence_1 2656.561 24.56
i) Haar for MCTF and a 2D Haar for spatial filtering
Sequence_2 758.25 33.29
ii) Haar for MCTF and a 2D Le Gall 5/3 for spatial
filtering Sequence_3 76.55 27.33
iii) Le Gall 5/3 for MCTF and a 2D Haar for spatial Sequence_4 28.46 25.86
filtering

iv) Le Gall 5/3 for MCTF and a 2D Le Gall 5/3 for spatial
filtering TABLE IV
USING 5/3 FOR MCTF AND 2D HAAR FOR A THRESHOLD OF (45,2)
Here, we considered four sequences where the
sequence_1 is a medical video of CT_SKULL, since the Sequence (256*256) Mean CR MeanPSNR (dB)
background in the video frames is uniform with a little
motion the CR achieved is phenomenally very high at high Sequence_2 531.65 32.89
thresholds (low bit rates). As similar to above features, a
non-medical sequence is selected (sequence_2) which gives Sequence_3 80.75 28.59
a high CR. For the sequence_3, a total change in the
background sequence is selected, gives a moderate CR. A Sequence_4 22.74 30.3
non-uniform background (poor spatial redundancy)
sequence (sequence_4) with a small movement is
considered which gives a very low CR. TABLE V

1) Results USING H.264 FOR DIFFERENT QP’S

We implemented the wavelet based video codec (new
Sequence (256*256) QP Mean CR Mean
scheme) and the H.264 baseline profile on an ADSP
PSNR (dB)
Blackfin 533 platform by considering only Y components
without coding. We used the notation (x, y) for setting the Sequence_1 38 1752 26.9
threshold to indicate x value is for Predicted frames and y
value is for updated frames. The Mean CR and Mean PSNR 40 2752.6 23.75
are calculated for the GOP excluding the Header
information. Sequence_2 38 460.15 34.33
TABLE I
USING HAAR FOR MCTF AND 2D HAAR FOR A THRESHOLD OF (35, 2)
40 794.72 32.55

Sequence (256*256) Mean CR Mean PSNR Sequence_3 38 66.76 29.75

(dB)
40 92.12 26.34
Sequence_2 290.13 34.58
Sequence_4 38 25.40 26.99
Sequence_3 50.80 27.31
40 59.05 26.83
Sequence_4 15.8 28.62

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B. Traditional Scheme
We also implemented the Wavelet based video
compression using longer filters (Le Gall 5/3) using
traditional approach, i.e., estimating the two motion
vectors for each frame. The implementation details are
same for both the schemes except the method for finding
the MV.
After MCTF, every resulting frame undergoes a 2D 9/7
(bi-orthogonal (4,4)) WT to remove the spatial
redundancy existing in the picture. The coefficients of the
wavelet transform are quantized and encoded using a 2-D
SPIHT algorithm. A uniform quantization (bits per pixel)
is applied commonly to all the predicted frames and a
different uniform quantization for all the average frames.
Here we considered Sequence_1, Sequence_2,
Sequence_3 and a medical sequence of MR_ Chest
(Sequence_5) is considered instead of a non-medical video
sequence. The results are shown in the following table
excluding the header information.
TABLE VI
RESULTS
Sequence MEAN bpp MEAN
(256*256) PSNR (dB)
Sequence_1 0.1575 20.02
Sequence_2 0.165 28.29
0.190 29.98
Sequence_3 0.190 26.57
0.263 26.94
Sequence_5 0.190 23.34
III. SECTION II
A. Conclusions
It has been observed that the Haar for MCTF and 2D –
Le Gall 5/3 transform gives better PSNR than H.264
Baseline profile at low bit rates (higher thresholds). While
with 5/3 transform for MCTF (proposed scheme) and 2D-
Le Gall 5/3 transform gives better PSNR than H.264
Baseline profile at all bit rates. Hence our new scheme
provides a good CR and PSNR as compared to H.264
Baseline profile, provided a fixed search range of 2. The
Wavelet based video codec implemented in this paper is
capable of an alternative to H.264 Base line profile.
Conceptually a P frame can alone be introduced using one
MV, while in our proposed scheme creates an illusion that a
B-frame is inserted using a single MV, which gives better
performance at low computational complexity.
With the traditional implementation of MCTF using
Le Gall 5/3 WT, both forward and backward motion
vectors are calculated individually. Wavelet based video
coding has an advantage that once a video is encoded at a
given resolution and quality, video with various lower
resolutions and qualities can be easily decoded using
portions of the bit streams. This feature called scalability
enables delivery of video over heterogeneous networks and
to serve clients with various display and processing
capabilities best suitable for Telemedicine applications.
B. Future Scope
The work is under progress to incorporate the encoding
scheme, which includes 3-D SPIHT (Set Portioning in
Hierarchical Trees). It is proposed that with an increase in
search range, the prediction of the Backward MV from
Forward MV has to be explored. The Encoding scheme
employed in traditional scheme is 2-D SPIHT without
entropy coding. It is also proposed that incorporating the
advanced coding techniques, which successfully removes
the redundancy between pixels, gives better results.
Sequence_1 Sequence_2 Sequence_3
Sequence_4 Sequence_5
Fig. 3 Set of sequences considered
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