Flexible storage of images with application to digital cameras

We present a new solution for storing a variable number of images in a fixed storage space at the highest overall quality. Initially, when only a few images are stored, they are stored losslessly (or near-losslessly). When more images have to be added, the storage space occupied by the previously stored images is adjusted optimally, in the rate-distortion sense, to fit in each new image. Thus, a variable amount of space is allocated to each image, depending on its complexity. The implementation is based on bit-rate scalable image compression methods, which enables the data for each new image to simply overwrite part of the data of previously stored images. Thus, the method operates without any decoding and re-encoding of image data on the storage medium. To illustrate the concept, we present the results of our experiments for a digital image camera application.