Image analysis for image compression suitability and real-time selection

摘要

The present invention provides an analysis method that uses error metrics to determine whether an image is suitable for compression. One embodiment of the present invention can make the determination in real-time. In one embodiment, analysis methods based on four error metrics are used to determine whether a compressed image should be used. The first metric is a signal-to-noise (SNR) error metric that prevents compressed images with low SNR from being used to represent original images. Another metric is detecting the geometric correlation of pixels within individual blocks of the compressed images. The third metric is used to determine whether color mapping in the compressed images are well-mapped. A final metric is a size metric that filters images smaller than a certain size and prevents them from being compressed. As most analysis methods are integral parts of the compression process, the present invention incurs little cost collecting error metric data.