In a systolic-array image processing system, a full-searched vector quantizer for data compression comprising an array of N processors, with N distortion parameters, d(i), one for each processor, and N codevectors stored in a codebook, where each stored codevector C.sub.i comprises m components C.sub.i (0), . . . , C.sub.i (m-1), said array of N processors processing input image data vectors and codevectors to generate said distortion parameters as a weighted sum of scalar distortion in accordance with the following equation:
- ##EQU11## where d(i) is the distortion between an input vector x and a stored codevector C.sub.i which is the i.sup.th codevector of the codebook, and D(x,C.sub.i) is said distortion parameter as a function of said input vector x and said stored codevector C.sub.i of the i.sup.th processor for 0.ltoreq.i.ltoreq.N-1 and 0.ltoreq.j.ltoreq.m-1, where x(j) represents the j.sup.th component of the input data vector x, C.sub.i (j) is the j.sup.th component of the i.sup.th codevector C.sub.i w(j) being the weighting factor in the distortion measure, and wherein an index, i, of said codevector C.sub.i of minimum distortion, i=min.sup.-1 d(i), represents a vector quantization coded data of an input vector, where said index corresponds to the i.sup.th processor, 0.ltoreq.i.ltoreq.N-1.