Enhanced compression of integral images by combined use of residual images and MPEG-4 algorithm in three-dimensional integral imaging

In this paper, we proposed a novel approach to enhance the compression rate of integral images by combined use of the residual images generated from the sub-images and the MPEG-4 algorithm. In the proposed method, elemental images picked up from a three-dimensional object are transformed into sub-images, and these sub-images are sequentially rearranged with a spiral scanning topology and the first sub-image is assigned as the reference image. Then, by sequentially computing the differences between the reference image and other consecutive sub-images, a sequence of residual images is generated. Here, the residual images together with the reference image are modeled as the consecutive video frames just like a conventional moving picture. Finally, these residual images are compressed with the MPEG-4 algorithm. Experimental results show that compression efficiency of the proposed method has been improved up to 61.56% as compared to those of the JPEG-based compression scheme and up to 151.54% as compared to those of the conventional method averagely. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.