Saliency-preserving video compression

In region-of-interest (ROI) video coding, the part of the frame designated as ROI is encoded with higher quality relative to the rest of the frame. At low bit rates, coding artifacts in non ROI parts of the frame may become salient and draw user´s attention away from ROI, thereby degrading visual quality. In this paper we propose a saliency-preserving framework for ROI video coding. This approach aims at reducing attention grabbing visual artifacts in non-ROI parts of the frame in order to keep user´s attention on ROI. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method is able to improve the visual quality of ROI video at low bit rates.