Unequal Error Protective and Standard Compatible Multiple Descriptions Coding for Image Communication

A new low complexity multiple descriptions coding (MDC) approach is presented, which has two main advantages: being compatible with standard image compression algorithms (JPEG is used here), and protecting the region of interest (ROI) more than the other parts of the image. This is achieved through applying our nonlinear geometrical transformation which is symmetric around the center of the ROI and increases the ratio of the area of the ROI to the whole image. The MDC is then accomplished by subsampling of the transformed version of the image, and encoding each of these subimages with a standard compression algorithm. Meanwhile the proposed method is standard compatible and also combines unequal error protection (UEP) and MDC.