A Fast Fractal Image Compression Algorithm Using Predefined Values for Contrast Scaling

Abstract: In this paper a new fractal image compression algorithm is proposed in which the time of encoding process is considerably reduced. The algorithm exploits a domain pool reduction approach, along with using innovative predefined values for contrast scaling factor, S, instead of scanning the parameter space [0,1]. Within this approach only domain blocks with entropies greater than a threshold are considered. As a novel point, it is assumed that in each step of the encoding process, the domain block with small enough distance shall be found only for the range blocks with low activity (equivalently low entropy). This novel point is used to find reasonable estimations of S, and use them in the encoding process as predefined values, mentioned above. The algorithm has been examined for some well-known images. This result shows that our proposed algorithm considerably reduces the encoding time producing images that are approximately the same in quality.