Speed-up in fractal image coding: comparison of methods

Fractal image compression has received much attention from the research community because of some desirable properties like resolution independence, fast decoding, and very competitive rate-distortion curves. Despite the advances made, the long computing times in the encoding phase still remain the main drawback of this technique. So far, several methods have been proposed in order to speed-up fractal image coding. We address the problem of choosing the best speed-up techniques for fractal image coding, comparing some of the most effective classification and feature vector methods-namely Fisher (1994), Hurtgen (1993), and Saupe (1995, 1996)-and a new feature vector coding scheme based on the block's mass center. Furthermore, we introduce two new coding schemes combining Saupe with Fisher, and Saupe with mass center coding scheme. Experimental results demonstrate both the superiority of feature vector techniques on classification and the effectiveness of combining Saupe and the mass center coding scheme, an approach that exhibits the best time-distortion curves.