Lossy compression of images without visible distortions and its application

Abstract

It is shown that images can be subject to lossy compression in such a way that introduced distortions are not visible. For this purpose, two modern visual quality metrics, MSSIM and PSNR-HVS-M, can be used. Their values are to be provided not less than 0.99 and 40 dB, respectively, and the corresponding lossy compression is to be carried out. Attained compression ratio (CR) depends upon image properties and a coder used. The proposed methodology of lossy compression can be successfully exploited in remote sensing and medical imaging with producing CR by several times larger than the best lossless image compression techniques.