HVS-Based Image Compression Scheme in Wavelet-Contourlet Domain

In this paper, we present an image compression scheme which exploits content-based quantization step considering the human visual system (HVS) in the Wavelet-Contourlet (DWT-CT) domain. Unlike usual DWT or CT algorithm, we decompose the image into DWT subbands followed by directional filters to account for the redundancy of the decomposition coefficients. We analyze the statistical property of the coefficients, and propose the adaptive quantization step according to the image content. Experimental results show that compared with the traditional EZW, the proposed scheme guarantees low compression ratio and distortion as well.