This module introduces the use of Laplacian PDFs in image compression.
It is found to be appropriate and convenient to model the
distribution of many types of transformed image coefficients byLaplacian distributions. It is appropriate because much real
data is approximately modeled by the Laplacian probabilitydensity function (PDF), and it is convenient because the
mathematical form of the Laplacian PDF is simple enough to allowsome useful analytical results to be derived.
A Laplacian PDF is a back-to-back pair of exponential decays and
is given by:
where
is the equivalent of a
time
constant which defines the
width of the PDF from the centre to the
points. The initial scaling factor ensures that the
area under
is unity, so that it is a valid PDF.
shows the shape of
.
The mean of this PDF is zero and the variance is given by:
(using integration by parts twice).
Hence the standard deviation is:
Given the variance (power) of a subimage of transformed pels, we
may calculate
and hence determine the PDF of the subimage, assuming
a Laplacian shape. We now show that, if we quantise the subimageusing a uniform quantiser with step size
, we can calculate the entropy of
the quantised samples and thus estimate the bit rate needed toencode the subimage in bits/pel. This is a powerful analytical
tool as it shows how the compressed bit rate relates directly tothe energy of a subimage. The vertical dashed lines in
show the decision thresholds
for a typical quantiser for the case when
.
First we analyse the probability of a pel being quantised to
each step of the quantiser. This is given by the area under
between each adjacent pair of quantiser thresholds.
Probability of being at step 0,
Probability of being at step
,
First, for
, we calculate:
Therefore,
and, for
,
By symmetry, if
is nonzero,
Now we can calculate the entropy of the subimage:
To make the evaluation of the summation easier when we
substitute for
, we let
where
and
. Therefore,
Now
and, differentiating by
:
. Therefore,
and
Hence the entropy is given by:
Because both
and
are functions of
, then
is a function of
just
too. We expect that, for constant
, as the energy of the subimage
increases, the entropy will also increase approximatelylogarithmically, so we plot
against
in dB in
. This
shows that our expectations are born out.
We can show this in theory by considering the case when
, when we find that:
Using the approximation
for small
, it is
then fairly straightforward to show that
We denote this approximation as
in
, which shows
how close to
the approximation
is, for
(i.e. for
dB).
We can compare the entropies calculated using
with those that were calculated
from the bandpass subimage histograms, as given in these figuresdescribing Haar transform energies and entropies;
level 1
energies ,
level 2 energies ,
level 3 energies , and
level 4
energies . (The Lo-Lo subimages have PDFs which are more
uniform and do not fit the Laplacian model well.) The values of
are calculated from:
The following table shows this comparison:
Transform level
Subimage type
Energy (×
)
No of pels
Laplacian entropy
Measured entropy
1
Hi-Lo
4.56
16384
11.80
2.16
1.71
1
Lo-Hi
1.89
16384
7.59
1.58
1.15
1
Hi-Hi
0.82
16384
5.09
1.08
0.80
2
Hi-Lo
7.64
4096
30.54
3.48
3.00
2
Lo-Hi
2.95
4096
18.98
2.81
2.22
2
Hi-Hi
1.42
4096
13.17
2.31
1.75
3
Hi-Lo
13.17
1024
80.19
4.86
4.52
3
Lo-Hi
3.90
1024
43.64
3.99
3.55
3
Hi-Hi
2.49
1024
34.87
3.67
3.05
4
Hi-Lo
15.49
256
173.9
5.98
5.65
4
Lo-Hi
6.46
256
112.3
5.35
4.75
4
Hi-Hi
3.29
256
80.2
4.86
4.38
We see that the entropies calculated from the energy via the
Laplacian PDF method (second column from the right) areapproximately 0.5 bit/pel greater than the entropies measured
from the Lenna subimage histograms. This is due to the heaviertails of the actual PDFs compared with the Laplacian
exponentially decreasing tails. More accurate entropies can beobtained if
is obtained from the mean absolute values of the pels
in each subimage. For a Laplacian PDF we can show that
This gives values of
that are about 20% lower than those calculated from
the energies and the calculated entropies are then withinapproximately 0.2 bit/pel of the measured entropies.