Scanned Document Compression Using Block-Based Hybrid Video Codec

This paper proposes a hybrid pattern matching/transform-based compression method for scanned documents. The idea is to use regular video interframe prediction as a pattern matching algorithm that can be applied to document coding. We show that this interpretation may generate residual data that can be efficiently compressed by a transform-based encoder. The efficiency of this approach is demonstrated using H.264/advanced video coding (AVC) as a high-quality single and multipage document compressor. The proposed method, called advanced document coding (ADC), uses segments of the originally independent scanned pages of a document to create a video sequence, which is then encoded through regular H.264/AVC. The encoding performance is unrivaled. Results show that ADC outperforms AVC-I (H.264/AVC operating in pure intramode) and JPEG2000 by up to 2.7 and 6.2 dB, respectively. Superior subjective quality is also achieved.