Spatial Constant Quantization in JPEG XR is Nearly Optimal

The JPEG XR image compression standard, originally developed under the name HD-Photo by Microsoft, offers the feature of spatial variably quantization; its codestream syntax allows to select one out of a limited set of possible quantizers per macro block and per frequency band. In this paper, an algorithm is presented that finds the rate-distortion optimal set of quantizers, and the optimal quantizer choice for each macro block. Even though it seems plausible that this feature may provide a huge improvement for images whose statistics is non-stationary, e.g. compound images, it is demonstrated that the PSNR improvement is not larger than 0.3 dB for a two-step heuristics of feasible complexity, but improvements of up to 0.8 dB for compound images are possible by a much more complex optimization strategy.