Morphological image coding via bit-plane decomposition and a new skeleton representation

The image is processed by an error-diffusion technique to reduce the number of bit-planes without significant quality degradation. The bit-planes of the resulting image are converted to Gray code and represented by a modified morphological skeleton which uses an increasing size structuring element. Redundancy in this representation is reduced with an algorithm motivated by a geometric sampling theorem. These reduced modified morphological skeletons are coded with an entropy coding scheme devised particularly for efficient skeleton coding. A post-processing operation. as well as the possibility of geometric progressive transmission, are also discussed