Compressing image regions containing detailed objects and simplified backgrounds under a fixed number of bytes

A sensor carrying device comprising:

• a camera which captures an image within its field of view;
• a processor that operates to process image data corresponding to the image captured by said camera, said processing including:
• selecting one or more regions of interest within the captured image;
• analyzing the selected regions of interest to detect objects appearing therein, such that each detected object has a bounding therearound defining an image crop;
• and for each image crop, iteratively compressing image data corresponding thereto, while varying one or more parameters with each successive iteration, until the compressed image data meets a target size;
• and
• a transmitter that transmits compressed image data which meets the target size over a wireless telecommunications link having a data rate limit imposed for such transmitting.

A float sufficiently buoyant to float on a body of water, said float comprising:

• a camera which captures an image within its field of view;
• a processor that operates to process image data corresponding to the image captured by said camera, said processing including:
• selecting one or more regions of interest within the captured image;
• analyzing the selected regions of interest to detect objects appearing therein, such that each detected object has a bounding therearound defining an image crop;
• and for each image crop, iteratively compressing image data corresponding thereto, while varying a set of parameters with each successive iteration, until the compressed image data meets a target size;
• and
• a transmitter that transmits compressed image data which meets the target size over a wireless telecommunications link having a data rate limit imposed for such transmitting;
• wherein the set of parameters includes parameters k, q and r, where k represents a number of pixel intensity clusters, q represents a quality of the compression and r represents an output resolution;
• and
• wherein a given iteration of compressing includes:
• resizing the image crop to a resolution indicated by a value of the parameter r for that given iteration;
• performing intensity-base clustering on resulting image intensities of the resized image crop to produce a number of intensity clusters, where the number of clusters is indicated by a value of the parameter k for the given iteration;
• setting each pixel within the resized image crop to a mean intensity value of one or more clusters which are closest to said pixel;
• and
• with each pixel so set, applying a compression algorithm to the image data corresponding to the resized image crop using an input quality according to a value of the parameter q for the given iteration.