Residual image coding using mathematical morphology

A new method for the extraction, selection and coding of perceptually significant image components in a video sequence is presented. It has been applied to the coding residues of a segmentation-based multilevel coding scheme in order to show the need for a careful perceptual selection in very low bit-rate video coding applications. Mathematical morphology operators are used for the extraction and selection steps of the proposed algorithm. The locations of the selected image components are then efficiently coded with a positional coder using prediction in the temporal dimension. The results show that for coding rates lower than 10 kbit/s, perceptual selection becomes a critical issue in order to achieve a good coding rendition. At higher rates, the fact of considering perceptual factors also leads to higher compression for similar subjective image quality