Costs and Advantages of Object-Based Image Coding with Shape-Adaptive Wavelet Transform

Abstract

Object-based image coding is drawing a great attention for the many opportunities it offers to high-level applications. In terms of rate-distortion performance, however, its value is still uncertain, because the gains provided by an accurate image segmentation are balanced by the inefficiency of coding objects of arbitrary shape, with losses that depend on both the coding scheme and the object geometry. This work aims at measuring rate-distortion costs and gains for a wavelet-based shape-adaptive encoder similar to the shape-adaptive texture coder adopted in MPEG-4. The analysis of the rate-distortion curves obtained in several experiments provides insight about what performance gains and losses can be expected in various operative conditions and shows the potential of such an approach for image coding.