Color image compression using a Hilbert scan

The Hilbert curve is one of the space-filling curves published by G. Peano. There are several applications using this curve such as image processing, computer graphics, etc. We concentrate on a compression technique for color images using the Hilbert curve. The merit of this curve is to pass through all points in a quadrant, and always to move to the neighboring quadrant. Our method is based on this neighborhood property by a simple segmentation of the scanned one dimensional data using a zero order interpolation. From our experiments, we have confirmed that inspite of the simple computation in comparison to JPEG, acceptable quality images can be obtained at the same bit-rates.