Lossy image compression is generally formulated as a joint rate-distortion optimization to learn encoder, quantizer, and decoder. However, the quantizer is non-differentiable, and discrete entropy estimation usually is required for rate control. These make it very challenging to develop a convolutional network (CNN)-based image compression system. In this paper, motivated by that the local information content is spatially variant in an image, we suggest that the bit rate of the different parts of the image should be adapted to local content. And the content aware bit rate is allocated under the guidance of a content-weighted importance map. Thus, the sum of the importance map can serve as a continuous alternative of discrete entropy estimation to control compression rate. And binarizer is adopted to quantize the output of encoder due to the binarization scheme is also directly defined by the importance map. Furthermore, a proxy function is introduced for binary operation in backward propagation to make it differentiable. Therefore, the encoder, decoder, binarizer and importance map can be jointly optimized in an end-to-end manner by using a subset of the ImageNet database. In low bit rate image compression, experiments show that our system significantly outperforms JPEG and JPEG 2000 by structural similarity (SSIM) index, and can produce the much better visual result with sharp edges, rich textures, and fewer artifacts.
The most related work is that of @cite_11 @cite_23 based on convolutional autoencoders. Ball 'e al @cite_11 use generalized divisive normalization (GDN) for joint nonlinearity, and replace rounding quantization with additive uniform noise for continuous relaxation of distortion and entropy rate loss. Theis al @cite_23 adopt a smooth approximation of the derivative of the rounding function, and upper-bound the discrete entropy rate loss for continuous relaxation. Our content-weighted image compression system is different with @cite_11 @cite_23 in rate loss, quantization, and continuous relaxation. Instead of rounding and entropy, we define our rate loss on importance map and adopt a simple binarizer for quantization. Moreover, the code length after quantization is spatially invariant in @cite_11 @cite_23 . In contrast, the local code length in our model is content-aware, which is useful in improving visual quality.
@cite_23 @cite_11
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We introduce a new image compression paradigm that combines compression efficiency with speed, and is based on an independent "infinite" mixture model which accurately captures the space-frequency characterization of the wavelet image representation. Specifically, we model image wavelet coefficients as being drawn from an independent generalized Gaussian distribution field, of fixed unknown shape for each subband, having zero mean and unknown slowly spatially-varying variances. Based on this model, we develop a powerful "on the fly" estimation-quantization (EQ) framework that consists of: (i) first finding the maximum-likelihood estimate of the individual spatially-varying coefficient field variances based on causal and quantized spatial neighborhood contexts; and (ii) then applying an off-line rate-distortion (R-D) optimized quantization entropy coding strategy, implemented as a fast lookup table, that is optimally matched to the derived variance estimates. A distinctive feature of our paradigm is the dynamic switching between forward and backward adaptation modes based on the reliability of causal prediction contexts. The performance of our coder is extremely competitive with the best published results in the literature across diverse classes of images and target bitrates of interest, in both compression efficiency and processing speed. For example, our coder exceeds the objective performance of the best zerotree-based wavelet coder based on space-frequency-quantization at all bit rates for all tested images at a fraction of its complexity. We describe an image compression method, consisting of a nonlinear analysis transformation, a uniform quantizer, and a nonlinear synthesis transformation. The transforms are constructed in three successive stages of convolutional linear filters and nonlinear activation functions. Unlike most convolutional neural networks, the joint nonlinearity is chosen to implement a form of local gain control, inspired by those used to model biological neurons. Using a variant of stochastic gradient descent, we jointly optimize the entire model for rate-distortion performance over a database of training images, introducing a continuous proxy for the discontinuous loss function arising from the quantizer. Under certain conditions, the relaxed loss function may be interpreted as the log likelihood of a generative model, as implemented by a variational autoencoder. Unlike these models, however, the compression model must operate at any given point along the rate-distortion curve, as specified by a trade-off parameter. Across an independent set of test images, we find that the optimized method generally exhibits better rate-distortion performance than the standard JPEG and JPEG 2000 compression methods. More importantly, we observe a dramatic improvement in visual quality for all images at all bit rates, which is supported by objective quality estimates using MS-SSIM. We describe an image compression method, consisting of a nonlinear analysis transformation, a uniform quantizer, and a nonlinear synthesis transformation. The transforms are constructed in three successive stages of convolutional linear filters and nonlinear activation functions. Unlike most convolutional neural networks, the joint nonlinearity is chosen to implement a form of local gain control, inspired by those used to model biological neurons. Using a variant of stochastic gradient descent, we jointly optimize the entire model for rate-distortion performance over a database of training images, introducing a continuous proxy for the discontinuous loss function arising from the quantizer. Under certain conditions, the relaxed loss function may be interpreted as the log likelihood of a generative model, as implemented by a variational autoencoder. Unlike these models, however, the compression model must operate at any given point along the rate-distortion curve, as specified by a trade-off parameter. Across an independent set of test images, we find that the optimized method generally exhibits better rate-distortion performance than the standard JPEG and JPEG 2000 compression methods. More importantly, we observe a dramatic improvement in visual quality for all images at all bit rates, which is supported by objective quality estimates using MS-SSIM. This paper deals with two related problems, namely distance-preserving binary embeddings and quantization for compressed sensing . First, we propose fast methods to replace points from a subset @math , associated with the Euclidean metric, with points in the cube @math and we associate the cube with a pseudo-metric that approximates Euclidean distance among points in @math . Our methods rely on quantizing fast Johnson-Lindenstrauss embeddings based on bounded orthonormal systems and partial circulant ensembles, both of which admit fast transforms. Our quantization methods utilize noise-shaping, and include Sigma-Delta schemes and distributed noise-shaping schemes. The resulting approximation errors decay polynomially and exponentially fast in @math , depending on the embedding method. This dramatically outperforms the current decay rates associated with binary embeddings and Hamming distances. Additionally, it is the first such binary embedding result that applies to fast Johnson-Lindenstrauss maps while preserving @math norms. Second, we again consider noise-shaping schemes, albeit this time to quantize compressed sensing measurements arising from bounded orthonormal ensembles and partial circulant matrices. We show that these methods yield a reconstruction error that again decays with the number of measurements (and bits), when using convex optimization for reconstruction. Specifically, for Sigma-Delta schemes, the error decays polynomially in the number of measurements, and it decays exponentially for distributed noise-shaping schemes based on beta encoding. These results are near optimal and the first of their kind dealing with bounded orthonormal systems.