The Use Of Human Visibility Functions In Segmentation Coding
Luc Van Eycken, B. Van Mellaert, Patrick Wambacq, A. Oosterlinck · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1989
The use of human visibility functions in image coding serves two purposes. First of all, they indicate the importance of certain pixel values to the human observer. The compression scheme can use this knowledge and allow a larger error for irrelevant features, resulting in a higher compression ratio of the image without visual image quality degradation. The use of the visibility functions is demonstrated in segmentation coding schemes, since these schemes allow a local (in the space domain) modification of the compression parameters. Furthermore, properties resulting from the shape of the visibility function are hardwired into a segmentation compression scheme. The second purpose of thy, visibility functions lies is the evaluation of the compressed image. The functions can be incorporated into a quality measure, describing the visual difference between the original image and the compressed one. The results of some experiments in using the visibility functions are described.