Improved vector quantization scheme for grayscale image compression

This paper proposes an improved image coding scheme based on vector quantization. It is well known that the image quality of a VQ-compressed image is poor when a small-sized codebook is used. In order to solve this problem, the mean value of the image block is taken as an alternative block encoding rule to improve the image quality in the proposed scheme. To cut down the storage cost of compressed codes, a two-stage lossless coding approach including the linear prediction technique and the Huffman coding technique is employed in the proposed scheme. The results show that the proposed scheme achieves better image qualities than vector quantization while keeping low bit rates.