GTT: Graph template transforms with applications to image coding

The Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT) is known to be optimal for decorrelating stationary Gaussian processes, and it provides effective transform coding of images. Although the KLT allows efficient representations for such signals, the transform itself is completely data-driven and computationally complex. This paper proposes a new class of transforms called graph template transforms (GTTs) that approximate the KLT by exploiting a priori information known about signals represented by a graph-template. In order to construct a GTT (i) a design matrix leading to a class of transforms is defined, then (ii) a constrained optimization framework is employed to learn graphs based on given graph templates structuring a priori known information. Our experimental results show that some instances of the proposed GTTs can closely achieve the rate-distortion performance of KLT with significantly less complexity.