Compression of Black-White Images with Arithmetic Coding

Abstract

A new approach for black and white image compression is described, with which the eight CCITT test documents can be compressed in a lossless manner 20-30 percent better than with the best existing compression algorithms. The coding and the modeling aspects are treated separately. The key to these improvements is an efficient binary arithmetic code. The code is relatively simple to implement because it avoids the multiplication operation inherent in some earlier arithmetic codes. Arithmetic coding permits the compression of binary sequences where the statistics change on a bit-to-bit basis. Model statistics are studied from stationary, stationary adaptive, and nonstationary adaptive assumptions.