Real Time Video Compression Using Wavelet Edge Enhancement Technique

Until recently, digital transmission of high-quality images was limited to special high- bandwidth communication links, but even these kinds of channels cannot provide for real- time transmission of high-rate image sequences. Thus, a digital image sequence must be coded prior to transmission and storage. To remove the redundant information, which always exists in image sequences, most high rate image sequence compression techniques as required for some multi-media applications use 2D coding to achieve spatial compression and motion compensated difference coding in the time dimension. The advantages of the wavelet transform for static image analysis are well known and NETROLOGIC has developed very powerful wavelet as well as Fractal Stationary Image compression routines. We plan to investigate the nonlinear multiresolution analysis in the time dimension to be applied either before or after the cociiiig stage of 2D wavelet coefficients processing. This technique will be used to extract and code separately the 'edges" and "texture' components in time domain, in order to detect and compactly code the information on interframe changes accumulated in "time edges". The approach achieving the best performance will be selected for an advanced prototyping study in Phase II.