Standard-Compliant Multiple Description Image Coding by Spatial Multiplexing and Constrained Least-Squares Restoration

  • Xiaolin Wu | McMaster University

We propose a practical standard-compliant multiple description (MD) image Coding technique. Multiple descriptions of an image are generated in the spatial domain by an adaptive prefiltering and uniform down sampling process. The resulting side descriptions are conventional square sample grids that are interleaved with one the other. As such each side description can be coded by any of the existing image compression standards. A side decoder reconstructs the input image by first decompressing the down-sampled image and then solving a least-squares inverse problem, guided by a two-dimensional windowed piecewise autoregressive model.The central decoder is algorithmically similar to the side decoder, but it improves the reconstruction quality by using received side descriptions as additional constraints when solving the underlying
inverse problem. Compared with its predecessors the proposed image MD technique offers the lowest encoder complexity, complete standard compliance, competitive rate-distortion performance, and superior subjective quality.

Speaker Details

Xiaolin Wu got his B.Sc. from Wuhan University, China in 1982, and Ph.D. from University of Calgary, Canada in 1988, both in computer science. Dr. Wu started his academic career in 1988, and has since been on the faculty of University of Western Ontario, New York Polytechnic University, and currently McMaster University, where he is a professor at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and holds the NSERC-DALSA industrial research chair in Digital Cinema. His research interests include multimedia computing and communication, joint source-channel coding, multiple description coding, image processing, and network-aware signal communication. He has published over one hundred and eighty research papers and holds two patents in these fields. Dr. Wu is an associated editor of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia.

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