Generic pre-processing of mixed raster content planes
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorRicardo de Queiroz
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A mixed raster content system and method improves the performance of the compression process by reducing the amount of data. The system and method uses a selector plane as a reference to aid in reducing the amount of data necessary to encode each of associated planes. A smoothing technique is used to pre-process the associated planes using the information contained in the selector plane, thereby reducing the amount of data that will be subjected to further processing. The system and method determines the useless data, smooths the boundary of the useless data, and replaces the useless data by values that improve compression.
Claims33
A method for compressing an image comprising:
- segmenting the image into a plurality of image planes including a selector plane and a first plane and a second plane, each image plane comprising a plurality of pixels, the selector plane indicating whether a pixel is to be stored in the first plane or the second plane;
- determining non-image areas in each of the first plane and the second plane based on the selector plane;
- generating false image data for each determined non-image area;
- replacing the non-image areas with the false image data;
- and
- compressing each image plane using an appropriate compression technique for that image plane.
An image compression system, comprising:
- an image segmentor that segments the image into a plurality of image planes including a selector plane and a first plane and a second plane, each image plane comprising a plurality of pixels, the selector plane indicating whether a pixel is to be stored in the first plane or the second plane;
- a plane analyzer that determines non-image areas in each of the first plane and the second plane based on the selector plane;
- a false image data generator that generates false image data for each determined non-image area and replaces the non-image areas with the false image data;
- and
- a compressor that compresses each image plane using an appropriate compression technique for that image plane.
An image compression system, comprising:
- means for segmenting the image into a plurality of image planes including a selector plane and a first plane and a second plane, each image plane comprising a plurality of pixels, the selector plane indicating whether a pixel is to be stored in the first plane or the second plane;
- means for determining non-image areas in each of the first plane and the second plane based on the selector plane;
- means for generating false image data for each determined non-image area;
- means for replacing the non-image areas with the false image data;
- and
- means for compressing each image plane using an appropriate compression technique for that image plane.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.