Efficient compression method for integral images using multi-view video coding

Integral imaging is an attractive auto-stereoscopic three dimensional (3D) technique for next generation 3DTV. To improve its video quality, new techniques are required to effectively compress the huge volume of integral image (II) data. In this paper, a new compression method implemented by multi-view video coding (MVC) is provided and used for sub-images (SI). SI is an alternative form of 2D image transformed from original II. Each SI represents the 3D scene from parallel viewing directions and contains superior compression capabilities than original captured elemental images (EI). For this reason, we consider arranging the group of SIs as the format of multi-view video (MVV) and then encode the generated MVV by MVC standard. Experimental results show that our proposed compression approach improves the compression efficiency when compared to the traditional MPEG-4/AVC compression method for II.