Downsampling Based Multiple Description Coding with Optimal Reconstruction Filters

In this paper, a multiple description image coding scheme is proposed to facilitate the transmission of images over media with possible packet loss. The proposed method is based on finding the optimal reconstruction filter coefficients that will be used to combine the multiple descriptions, based on least squares minimization. Firstly, the original image is down sampled and each sub-image is coded using standard JPEG. These decoded images are then mapped to the original image size using the optimal filters. Multiple descriptions consist of coded down sampled images and the corresponding optimal reconstruction filter coefficients. It is shown that the proposed method gives superior results compared with standard interpolation filters (i.e .bicubic and bilinear).