The coding-optimal transform

We propose a new transform coding algorithm that integrates all optimization steps into a coherent and consistent framework. Each iteration of the algorithm is designed to minimize coding distortion as a function of both the transform and quantizer designs. Our algorithm is a constrained version of the Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) algorithm for vector quantizer design. The reproduction vectors are constrained to lie at the vertices of a rectangular grid. A significant result of our approach is a new transform basis specifically designed to minimize mean-squared quantization distortion for both fixed-rate and entropy-constrained coding. For Gaussian distributed data, this transform reduces to the Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT). However, in general the coding-optimal transform (COT) differs from the KLT enough to provide up to 1 dB improvement in compressed signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on images. We describe a practical algorithm that finds the COT for a given signal. In addition, we present image compression results demonstrating the SNR improvement achieved with our algorithm relative to KLT based transform coding.