Image compression based on multistage vector quantization

This paper presents a new three-stage vector quantization system for the compression of images. It uses some simple schemes including error block classifier, search order coding (SOC), and index vector coding. The error block classifier preserves the edge blocks and discards the psychovisually redundant texture blocks in the last stage. The index vector coding encodes the combination of quantization indexes of the last two stages, and the SOC is used for encoding the quantization index of the first stage. The proposed system can achieve better compression performance than the conventional multistage vector quantization systems. (C) 2000 Academic Press.