Signal to noise improvement

A computer-implemented method for compressing a sequence of digitized video images represented as pixels utilizing signal-to-noise improvement layers, the method being implemented in a computer system comprising one or more physical processors, the method comprising:

• applying a filter structure to generate a hierarchy of reduced resolution layers from a digitized video image;
• and
• generating at least one signal-to-noise layer, each such signal-to-noise layer corresponding to one of the reduced resolution layers.

A computer-implemented method of using signal-to-noise improvement layers to improve compression of a sequence of images represented as pixels having a values representing different colors within a color space, the method being implemented in a computer system comprising one or more physical processors, the method comprising:

• applying a non-linear function to each color value of the pixels of an image to create a perceptually weighted image;
• and
• generating a signal-to-noise layer from each perceptually weighted image.

A computer-implemented method for compressing a sequence of digitized video image frames represented as pixels utilizing signal-to-noise improvement layers, the method being implemented in a computer system comprising one or more physical processors, the method comprising:

• generating at least one processed layer from at least one of the digitized video image frames, each processed layer comprising a plurality of values, wherein at least one layer is a signal-to-noise layer;
• and
• encoding at least one processed layer by preferentially allocating coding bits to regions of interest in such layer by decreasing the amplitude of pixel differences near edges of a digitized video image frame using a weighting which decreases as a function of nearness to such frame edges.