Compression of Still Images

Abstract

Data compression, and in particular image compression, plays an important role in today’s information age. Images take up over 90% of the data transfer volume on the Internet and bottlenecks like modems require heavy compression to satisfy the demands of a user. One can divide the subject of data compression into two categories: lossless compression for an exact reconstruction of the original data, and lousy compression for an approximate - as close as possible to the original - reconstruction. In this chapter we address lossless and lossy compression techniques for still images.