Method of adaptive structure-driven compression for image transmission over ultra-low bandwidth data links

A decoding method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a compressed structure-driven stream of image data via a low bandwidth communication channel, the stream of image data including encoded structure geometry data and encoded structure intensity data that are generated via edge extraction, wherein said edge extraction includes edge thinning and edge linking to form edge contours, and wherein said edge contours are decomposed into structural chains including said structure geometry data and said structure intensity data and the structural chains are prioritized and certain structural chains eliminated based on a threshold number of edge pixels;
• decompressing the compressed and encoded stream of image data to recover the encoded structure geometry data and the encoded structure intensity data from said structural chains, wherein the step of decompressing the compressed stream of data comprises performing geometric specific statistical decoding of the stream of data to recover geometric predictor and differentiator sequence data and wherein said step of decompressing comprises
• decompressing the encoded structure geometry data and statistically decoding the geometric profile of each received structural chain and then
• decompressing the encoded structure intensity data and statistically decoding the intensity profile of each received structural chain;
• and
• reconstructing an image associated with the decoded image data.