Novel prediction- and subblock-based algorithm for fractal image compression

Fractal encoding is the most consuming part in fractal image compression. In this paper, a novel two-phase prediction- and subblock-based fractal encoding algorithm is presented. Initially the original gray image is partitioned into a set of variable-size blocks according to the S-tree- and interpolation-based decomposition principle. In the first phase, each current block of variable-size range block tries to find the best matched domain block based on the proposed prediction-based search strategy which utilizes the relevant neighboring variable-size domain blocks. The first phase leads to a significant computation-saving effect. If the domain block found within the predicted search space is unacceptable, in the second phase, a subblock strategy is employed to partition the current variable-size range block into smaller blocks to improve the image quality. Experimental results show that our proposed prediction- and subblock-based fractal encoding algorithm outperforms the conventional full search algorithm and the recently published spatial-correlation-based algorithm by Truong et al. in terms of encoding time and image quality. In addition, the performance comparison among our proposed algorithm and the other two algorithms, the no search-based algorithm and the quadtree-based algorithm, are also investigated.