Efficient image compression based on combination of fuzzy fractal theory

Fractal image compression has received much attention from the research community because of some desirable properties like resolution independence, fast decoding and very competitive rate-distortion curve. Though progress has been made in fractal compression, the long encoding times still remain the main drawback of this technique, which result from the need for performing a large number of range-domain matches. The total encoding time is the sum of the time required to perform each match. The reduction of the encoding time leads to minimization of the formula ||r - (sd + o1)||₂², where s, o are respectively the luminance and contrast of the domain block d, and r is the range block. Several methods have been proposed in order to speed-up fractal image coding. An efficiency fuzzy algorithm based on fuzzy comparison of the feature distance between each range and domain block has been provided to speed-up the encoding time, without degradation of the image quality. The proposed method has been compared to the general fractal coding method for testing its efficiency.