LOSSY TO LOSSLESS IMAGE COMPRESSION BASED ON REVERSIBLE INTEGER DCT

Lei Wang, Jiaji Wu, Licheng Jiao, Li Zhang and Guangming Shi
Key Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding of Ministry of Education of China,
Institute of Intelligent Information Processing, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, P.R. China
ABSTRACT
A progressive image compression scheme is investigated
using reversible integer discrete cosine transform (RDCT)
which is derived from the matrix factorization theory.
Previous techniques based on DCT suffer from bad
performance in lossy image compression compared with
wavelet image codec. And lossless compression methods
such as IntDCT, I2I-DCT and so on could not compare
with JPEG-LS or integer discrete wavelet transform (DWT)
based codec. In this paper, lossy to lossless image
compression can be implemented by our proposed scheme
which consists of RDCT, coefficients reorganization, bit
plane encoding, and reversible integer pre- and post-filters.
Simulation results show that our method is competitive
against JPEG-LS and JPEG2000 in lossless compression.
Moreover, our method outperforms JPEG2000 (reversible
5/3 filter) for lossy compression, and the performance is
even comparable with JPEG2000 which adopted
irreversible 9/7 floating-point filter (9/7F filter).
Index Terms—Block transform, JPEG2000, lossless
compression, reversible integer DCT
1. INTRODUCTION
Image compression has been becoming increasingly
important with the development of aviation,
communications, internet and space techniques; especially
lossless compression becomes indispensable when there is
no loss of information is tolerable such as medical image,
remote sensing, image archiving, and satellite
communications and so on. Compression ratio and bit
distortion always contradict each other, so the techniques
pursuing for higher compression ratio with less distortion
even without information loss has been one of the popular
research issues in image compression. Fortunately a unified
representation for lossy to lossless image compression can
be provided by reversible coding, so both satisfying
recovered images at reasonable compression ratio and fully
reconstructed images can be obtained from a single
compressed file.
DCT has been applied in many international compression
standards such as JPEG, MPEG, and H.26X and so on for
its special advantages including: highly energy-compacting
capability, transforming block by block as a result of
parallel implementation and low memory requirement.
However, blocking DCT is less of considerations on the
correlations of inter-blocks and always results in blocking
artifacts at low bit rate, both of these defects effect the rate
distortion (RD) performance and visual quality of
reconstructed images. Furthermore, the DCT-based
reversible image compression was not well developed.
Hao et al. [1] have obtained very good results about
lossless image compression using integer-DCT-based
methods; however, the simulation results are still scarce
about lossy compression. In fact, there is still a large
margin to improve the RD performance. As far as we know,
researches about DCT can be classified into two categories:
first, researches on the integer approximation of DCT
matrix for lossless compression; second, researches on
lossy compression. The first class includes: Chen et al.
proposed the low-cost 8-point Integer DCT (IntDCT) which
is based on the Walsh-Hadamard Transform (WHT) and
integer lifting [2]; Abhayaratne proposed N-point I2I-DCT
by applying recursive methods and lifting techniques,
where N is power of 2 [3]. The second class includes:
Xiong presented a DCT-based embedded image coder
which was called EZDCT [4]; Tran et al. designed TDLT
(time domain lapped transform) by adding pre- and post-
filter to the DCT [5]. Although some of the above
algorithms obtained good results, but a progressive
reversible image compression scheme based on DCT with
high performance in both lossy and lossless compression
nearly doesn’t exist.
In this paper, we developed a progressive reversible
image compression scheme which can realize lossy to
lossless compression. In our scheme, RDCT is used for
transforming combined with reversible integer pre-filter
which will make blocked source pixels more compatible for
block transform and post-filter for reducing blocking

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos.60607010, 60672125, 60672126,
60736043, 60776795; the Program for Cheung Kong Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (PCSIRT, IRT0645); Hunan
Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.08JJ3123.

978-1-4244-1764-3/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE 1037 ICIP 2008

artifacts. RDCT coefficients are reorganized into sub-band Table I: TERMs Factorized from 4-point DCT Matrix
structure, and then coded by context-based block coding. P L
Simulation experiments have been taken on benchmark 0 1 0 0 1
images for both lossy and lossless image compression and 1 0 0 0 0.2346 1
our algorithm outperforms JPEG-LS [6] and JPEG2000
0 0 0 1 0.4142 -0.7654 1
(5/3 filter) [7] in lossless compression, and performs better
0 0 1 0 0.2346 0 -0.6934 1
than JPEG2000 (5/3 filter) in reversible lossy compression,
comparable with irreversible JPEG2000 (9/7 F filter). U S
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. A brief 1 -0.2929 -0.0137 -0.6533 1
review about DCT and the modified matrix factorization 1 0.3066 0.6533 0 1
method will be taken in Sec. 2. In Sec. 3, the realization of 1 0.5000 0 0 1
RDCT will be introduced. In the following, RDCT-based 1 0.5307 -0.8626 0.3933 1
entropy coding will be described in Sec. 4. Finally, the last
section will present the experimental results and discussions. 3 REVERSIBLE INTEGER HIERARCHICAL DCT

2. DCT AND MODIFIED MATRIX 3.1 Reversible Integer Discrete Cosine Transform
FACTORIZATION METHOD
From the formula (1), the four-point discrete cosine
2.1 DCT transform matrix can be easily got as follows.
The type-II DCT and its inverse in one dimension are given § 0.5000 0.5000 0.5000 0.5000 ·
¨ ¸
by the following equations: 0.6533 0.2706 -0.2706 -0.6533 ¸
A ¨
2 N 1 Sk ¨ 0.5000 -0.5000 -0.5000 0.5000 ¸
X C (k ) H k ¦ x ( n ) c o s (( 2 n  1) ) (1) ¨ ¸
N n 0 2N © 0.2706 -0.6533 0.6533 -0.2706 ¹
2 N 1 Sk As we can see, the elements of the matrix are values
x(k ) Hk ¦ X C ( n ) c o s (( 2 n  1) 2 N )
N n 0
(2) between -1 and 1, and this will result in float-point
transform coefficients. By calculating we can proved that
for k = 0… N-1, where
the determinant of DCT kernel matrix is equal to 1, so the
­ 1 matrix factorization theory can be applied to it. Table I
° if k 0,
Hk ® 2 tabulates the factorization result.
° 1 else. Now we take upper TERM U to illustrate how to realize
¯
x(n) is the input sequence of length N, reversible integer to integer transform. Suppose U ^um , n ` ,
Sk then Y = UX can be realized as follows:
cos((2n  1) ) is the discrete cosine transform kernel.
2N ­ « N »
° y m u m , m xm  « ¦ u m , n xn »
® ¬ n m 1 ¼ (4)
2.2 Modified Matrix Factorization Method °y
¯ N u N ,N Nx
We will have a brief introduction about the modified matrix where m 1, 2,! , N  1.
factorization method in this section. Hao has proved that a
And its inverse transform is:
nonsingular matrix can be factorized into a product of at
most three triangular elementary reversible matrices ­ xN yN / uN , N
°
(TERMs) [1]. Galli and Salzo modified the method by ® 1 § « N »·
proposing a procedure of quasi-complete pivoting which ° xm u ¨ ym  « ¦ um,n xn » ¸ (5)
¯ m, m © ¬ n m1 ¼¹
leads to a better integer approximation to the original float-
point transform matrix [8]. where m N  1, N  2,!,1.
Suppose a nonsingular matrix A  R N u N without loss of Where «¬ »¼ denotes rounding to the nearest integer.
generality with determinant of module 1, the decomposing Obviously, lower TERM can realize reversible integer to
formula can be defined as integer transform in the same way and arbitrary point
A PLUS , (3) integer DCT could be realized using the property of TERM.
where L and S are lower triangular matrices, U is upper
matrix and P is the permutation matrix.

1038
 Table II: Lossy compression, PSNR comparison (in dB)
Reversible Irreversible
JPEG2000 RDCT (8 point) RDCT (16 point) JPEG2000 JPEG2000
bpp
(5/3) SPIHT OURS SPIHT OURS (5/3) (9/7F)
Lena 512×512,8bpp
1 39.31 39.20 39.48 39.22 39.51 39.86 40.35
0.5 36.32 36.55 36.82 36.73 37.00 36.61 37.28
0.25 33.26 33.52 33.81 33.77 34.08 33.44 34.14
Barbara 512×512,8bpp
1 35.81 37.05 37.44 37.53 37.95 36.11 37.17
0.5 30.86 32.55 33.03 33.47 33.87 31.03 32.29
0.25 27.36 28.75 29.20 29.85 30.26 27.41 28.39
Goldhill 512×512,8bpp
1 35.88 35.98 36.33 35.99 36.39 36.21 36.59
0.5 32.74 32.93 33.21 32.95 33.26 32.91 33.25
0.25 30.09 30.44 30.69 30.46 30.79 30.31 30.54
Baboon 512×512,8bpp
1 28.61 28.93 29.27 29.07 29.40 28.63 29.11
0.5 25.06 25.52 25.76 25.66 25.93 25.20 25.59
0.25 22.81 23.21 23.45 23.30 23.52 22.88 23.15
Finger 512×512,8bpp
1 30.54 31.67 32.13 32.19 32.66 30.66 31.64
0.5 26.86 27.84 28.20 28.18 28.58 27.09 27.86
0.25 23.68 24.39 24.76 24.80 25.12 23.82 24.37

3.2 Hierarchical RDCT with integer pre- and post- by 0.2~0.5 dB compared with one-level RDCT at the same
filters rate of the same image.

In our scheme, pre-filter is added to the input signals before
RDCT acting as a flattening operator to make pixels in one
block more homogeneous to improve the efficiency of
compacting energy; while post-filter is added to the
reconstructed signals from inverse RDCT with the function
of de-blocking [5]. The same matrix factorization method is
used to the pre- and post-filter to realize reversible integer
to integer transform. The general formula of pre-filter [5]
can be defined as:
1 ª I J º ªI 0 º ª I J º
F , (6)
2 «¬ J -I »¼ «¬0 V »¼ «¬ J -I »¼
where I and J are identity matrix and reversal identity
matrix respectively. V is free control matrix.
V J (CMII / 2 )T D S CMIV / 2 J , (7)
where CMII / 2 and CMIV / 2 stand for M / 2 point type-II and
type-IV DCT matrix respectively; DS diag ^s,1,",1` is a
diagonal matrix where s is a scaling factor. It should be
noticed that, the determinant of the filter matrix F does not
equal to 1 and should be modified to satisfy det F 1
before factorizing.
In order to combine RDCT with wavelet-based codec,
the transform coefficients should be reorganized into tree
structure before coding [4]. With the transformed
coefficients of sub-band structure in hand, a simple way to
improve the efficiency of transform is to apply another
RDCT in the DC sub-band for further de-correlation, and
this can be defined as hierarchical RDCT. Simulation
results show that two-level RDCT could improve the PSNR
4. RDCT-BASED LOSSY AND LOSSLESS
ENTROPY ENCODING
Once the DCT coefficients have been organized into tree-
structure, wavelet-based codec can be used here.
An improved SPECK algorithm is designed to encode
transform coefficients. The original SPECK [9] has not
adopted high order arithmetic coding. Our algorithm
improves the SPECK by adopting context model likes
JPEG2000 on its arithmetic coding for further reducing
correlations of transform coefficients. In our algorithm,
refinement pass coding adopts 3 contexts, sign coding
adopts 5 contexts, and significant coefficients and blocks
coding adopt 20 contexts.
5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
We perform experiments on still images using DWT and
RDCT combined with several progressive codec, such as
Said and Pearlman’s SPIHT [10] and our coding algorithm.
The DWT in SPIHT codec is replaced by RDCT combined
with integer pre- and post-filters. Also, JPEG2000 which
adopts single layer coding stream has been included in our
experiments for comparison. The lossy and lossless
compression performances are evaluated by PSNR (peak
signal to noise ratio) and bpp (bits per pixel) respectively.
In our simulation experiments, testing images include Lena,
Barbara, Goldhill, Baboon and Finger, all of which are
gray-scale (8bpp) images with size of 512×512.

1039
 Table III: Lossless Performance (in bpp)
JPEG2000 JPEG-LS OURS
(5/3) 8 point 16 point
Lena 4.316 4.243 4.341 4.317
Barbara 4.786 4.863 4.689 4.558
Goldhill 4.837 4.712 4.854 4.816
Baboon 6.111 6.038 5.968 5.919
Finger 5.665 5.663 5.535 5.415
method and the detailed textures are preserved better than
JPEG2000.
(a) Goldhill, 30.79dB (b) Barbara, 30.26 dB
5.2 Evaluation of lossless compression

Table III illustrates the lossless compression results of our

method, JPEG2000, and JPEG-LS on testing images. It can
be seen that our method based on RDCT outperforms
JPEG2000 (5/3 filter) and JPEG-LS for most images.

6. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we present a progressive lossy to lossless

(c) Goldhill, 30.09 dB
(d) Barbara, 27.36 dB
image compression scheme based on hierarchical RDCT.
Simulation results show that the new scheme performs well
in both reversible lossy and lossless compression. Besides,
block transform can be implemented parallel as a result of
fast computing compatibility compared with DWT.

7. REFERENCES

[1] P. Hao and Q. Shi, “Matrix factorizations for reversible

(e) Goldhill, 30.54 dB (f) Barbara, 28.39 dB
Fig.1. Portion of Reconstructed Images at 0.25 bpp, our method (top)
versus JPEG2000 5/3 filter (middle) based on reversible transform and
9/7F filter (bottom).
5.1 Evaluation of lossy compression
Table II summarizes the PSNR of benchmark images with
different methods. Both 8×8 and 16×16 RDCT have been
performed in our experiments. Reversible and irreversible
JPEG2000 have been taken for comparison. Images at
different bit rate can be recovered from a single codestream
and one can see that the results of our method are better
than JPEG2000 for most images at most bit rates. The
PSNR of our method based on RDCT on Barbara are about
2.14~3.01 dB and 0.78~1.86 dB higher than the
performances of JPEG2000 using reversible 5/3 filter and
irreversible 9/7F filter respectively. And 16 point DCT
performs about 0.1~0.4 dB better than 8 point DCT with a
little cost of the complexity increment.
Portions of Goldhill and Barbara, reconstructed from
JPEG2000 and our method based on 16-point RDCT at
0.25 bpp are illustrated in Fig.1. Block artifacts have been
reduced due to the pre- and post-filters adopted in our
integer mapping,” IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol.49,
pp.2314-2324, Oct. 2001.
[2] Y. Chen, S. Oraintara, and T. Nguyen, “Integer discrete
cosine transform (IntDCT),” in Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Inform.,
Commun. Signa. Process, Dec. 1999.
[3] G.C.K. Abhayaratne, “Reversible integer-to-integer
mapping of N-point orthonormal block transforms”. Signal
Processing, v.87 n.5 pp. 950–969,2007
[4] Z. Xiong, O. Guleryuz, and M. T. Orchard, “A DCT-based
embedded image coder,” IEEE Signal Processing Lett., vol.
3, pp. 289–290, Nov. 1996.
[5] T. D. Tran, J. Liang, and C. Tu, “Lapped transform via time-
domain pre- and post-processing,” IEEE Trans. Signal
Process, vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 1557–1571, Jun. 2003.
[6] ISO / IEC JTC1 SC29 WG1 (JPEG / JBIG), “FCD 14495,
Lossless and near-lossless coding of continuous tone still
images (JPEG-LS)”.
[7] ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 29/WG 1 (ITU-T SG8), “The JPEG 2000
Still Image Compression Standard”.
[8] L. Galli and S. Salzo, “Lossless hyperspectral compression
using KLT,” IEEE IGARSS, vol.1, pp.313-316, Sept. 2004.
[9] Asad Islam, William A. Pearlman, “Embedded and efficient
low-complexity hierarchical image coder”, in Proc. Visual
Communications and Image Processing '99, San Jose, CA,
USA, vol.3653, pp. 294-305, 1998.
[10] A. Said, W. A. Pearlman, “A new, fast and efficient image
codec based on set partitioning in hierarchical trees”, IEEE
Trans. Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol.6,
no.3, pp. 243-250, 1996.

1040