Efficient image signal coding system

Abstract: An image signal coding system comprising: blocking means (2) for dividing input signals representing sampled values into a plurality of blocks; orthogonal transformation means (3) for performing an orthogonal transformation on the output signals of said blocking means representing each block, dividing the results of the orthogonal transformation into a mean component and variation components and outputting the mean component and the variation components; first normalising means (4) for effecting interblock normalisation of the mean component and the variation components of the output of said orthogonal transformation means; and second normalising means (7) for normalising variation components of output signals of said first normalising means (4) in each of the blocks.

Description: This invention generally relates to an efficient coding system and more particularly to a highly efficient coding system which can perform highly efficient coding of a small block of an input image. Half tone image signals, of which a typical example is television signals, include vast quantity of information. Therefore, a broad-band transmission line is necessary for transmission of such half tone image signals. Further, a bulk memory is necessary for recording of such half tone image signals. On the other hand, redundancy, that is, self-correlation of such an image signal is high. Thus, efficient coding systems and methods for reducing the redundancy of the image signal and for efficiently transmitting and recording the image have been studied and developed. Typical and fundamental methods for reproducing the redundancy are a predictive coding and a transform coding and so on. First the predictive coding, which is referred to also as a differential coding or a differential pulse-code modulation (PCM), is a method which predicts the current sampled value of a pixel or picture element from the actual sampled value of a pixel already coded and then effects coding of a prediction error, that is, a difference between the predicted value and the actual value. Further, the transform coding is a method wherein first, sampled values of data indicated by original image signals are transformed with respect to "bases" which are independent of or intersect orthogonally to each other, that is, effects an orthogonal transform of each block of original image data represented by original signals to obtain components which are adapted to characteristics of the original image data and are independent of each other, and then coding of the components is effected. Hereinafter, the transform coding will be described in detail. First, it is to be noted that generally, low-frequency components of image signals have a large proportion of electric power of the image signals and thus high-frequency components of image signals have a small portion of the electric power thereof but the latter components play an important role in representing information. Therefore, the coding of the original image signals can be efficiently performed as a whole by first transforming the image signals into such components, then effecting quantization of each of such components in a manner suitably adapted thereto, further coding the result of the quantization, thereafter transmitting the resultant codes to a receiving system and finally performing an inverse transform of the transmitted codes in the receiving system to restore the original image. Thus, in the transform coding, an original image or picture is first divided into blocks each composed of a suitable number of pixels. Then, as to each of the blocks, an orthogonal transform of a sequence of sampled numerical values is effected. That is, a linear transformation of the sequence of the sampled values is performed with respect to bases" which are adapted to characteristics of the original image signals and are independent of each other. Thus, the resultant components (that is, the values obtained by the transformation) becomes more independent of each other, that is more uncorrelated with each other, in comparison with the original sampled values. Thereby, redundant information can be reduced. In short, the predictive coding is a method to reduce the correlation among the sampled data by a transforming operation on a "time dimension" and on the other hand the transform coding is a method to eliminate the correlation by a transforming operation on a "frequency dimension". As a result, the electric power is distributed to specific components, that is, a limited range of components of the image signals due to statistical properties of the image signals. Then, further taking visual characteristics of the restored image into consideration, a greater number of bits are allocated to the components of which electric power is large, and in contrast the components, of which electric power is small, are coarsely quantized by use of a small number of bits. Thereby, a bit rate, that is, a number of bits per block can be reduced as a whole. Generally, Fourier transform is familiar as the orthogonal transformation. However, in the technical field of image signal processing, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is mainly used. Further, the order of the transform is usually set as, for example, 4, 8 or 16. In general, the higher the order of the transform becomes, the higher the efficiency of the coding becomes. Incidentally, there is a large amount of literature about transform coding. For instance, the transform coding is explained in detail in "Digital Image Signal Processing" by T. Fukinuki published by Nikkan Kogyo Shinbunsha, pp. 179 - 196. Thus, further detailed descriptions of the transform coding are omitted herein. US-A-4,707,738 also discloses a system which divides the image into blocks to carry out a DCT transform on each. The DC coefficient is linearly quantised and coded by a nine bit code. The other coefficients have a threshold subtracted; are normalised by division by a parameter D calculated by an output rate regulating device; and are coded in accordance with a Huffman code. However, conventional transform coding has the following problem. Indeed the numerical efficiency of the coding becomes higher when the order of the transform is increased, but subjective picture quality, that is, picture quality obtained by actual visual evaluation of a restored picture is not always improved. The causes of this are as follows. First, as the order of the transform increases, the shape of a block distortion becomes a large block-like one to the extent sufficient to be conspicuous in the restored picture. Further, errors occur in a wide range from peripheral portions of edges of an object to a flat portion in which the gray level is not substantially changed and thus picture quality is often degraded. Further, by the orthogonal transform, fine figures or patterns such as a thin segment are decomposed into components thereof to disappear from a picture. Thus, in this respect, the picture quality is degraded. Moreover, in case where the order of the transform is high, unless the precision of computation in a coding system is equal to that of computation in the decoding (receiving) system, the picture quality is degraded. Therefore, in such a case, it is necessary for improving the picture quality to make the precision of computation in both of the coding system and the receiving system high. In order to make the precision of computation high, there is necessity of increasing word length employed in processing in hardware. Thus, the conventional transform coding has another problem that the size of the hardware becomes large and the cost is increased. The higher the order of the transform becomes, the more conspicuous the drawbacks have become. The present invention is accomplished to alleviate the defects of the conventional coding system. It is therefore an aim of the present invention to provide an highly efficient coding system which can performing very efficiently coding with a relatively low order of the orthogonal transform, a simple configuration and a low cost and without the degradation of the subjective picture quality as caused in the conventional system by effecting normalization at least two times, that is, interblock normalization and normalization of data in each block. According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an efficient image signal coding system comprising: blocking means for dividing input signals representing sampled values into a plurality of blocks; orthogonal transformation means for performing an orthogonal transformation on each block of signals output from said blocking means, dividing the results of said orthogonal transformation representing each block into a first component representing the mean value of the input signals of the block and the other components, and outputting the first and other components; and first normalising means for effecting normalisation of said components output from said orthogonal transformation means; characterised in that for a plurality of blocks said first normalising means is for effecting inter-block normalisation wherein a first normalisation of each of said first components of each block of said plurality is effected and a second normalisation of each of said other components of each block of said plurality is effected, and in that said system further comprises second normalising means for effecting further normalisation of said other components of each block output from said first normalising means, wherein said second normalising means effects the normalisation of each block separately. The first and the second normalization are effected on the resultant components (hereunder sometimes referred to simply as "coefficients") of the orthogonal transform. First, the first normalization is effected on all of sets of the "coefficients", each set of the "coefficients" being obtained by the orthogonal transform of each of the plurality of the blocks. Further, by the first normalization, the mean components and the variation components which have close interblock correlation are normalized in common and thus a normalization using interblock correlation is effected on the "coefficients". Further, the second normalization is effected on only the variation components every block of sampled values transformed orthogonally. Thus, in comparison with the first normalization, the second normalization is effected on smaller blocks. Thereby, useless regions of "coefficients" can be eliminated. Further, quantization having a precision appropriate to the visual characteristics can be effected. Thereby, the efficiency of coding is substantially increased. Further, the order of the transform can be relatively low. Moreover, the degradation of the subjective picture quality as caused in the conventional system can be eliminated. Furthermore, the coding can be effected with a simple configuration at a low cost. Other features, objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of an exemplary embodiment with reference to the drawings in which like reference characters designate like or corresponding parts throughout several views, and in which: Fig. 1 is a block diagram showing a highly efficient coding system embodying the present invention; Fig. 2 is a block diagram showing first normalizing means of the embodiment of Fig. 1; Figs. 3 (A), (B) and (C) are diagrams each for illustrating an operation of the normalizing means of Fig. 2; Fig. 4 is a block diagram showing second normalizing means of the embodiment of Fig. 1; and Fig. 5 is a diagram for illustrating an operation of the second normalizing means of Fig. 3. Hereinafter, an exemplary embodiment of the present invention will be described by referring to the accompanying drawings. Referring first to Fig. 1, there is shown a highly efficient coding system embodying the present invention. As shown in this figure, input signals (hereunder sometimes referred to as sampled-value inputting signals) representing sampled values are inputted from an input terminal 1 and supplied to a blocking device 2. This blocking device 2 divides the sampled-value inputting signals, which are usually sampled from image signals in the order of pixels scanned by a raster scan, into a plurality of blocks by use of line memories. Then, the device 2 outputs the sampled-value inputting signals in the order of blocks. Further, the output signals of the blocking device 2 are fed to an orthogonal transforming device 3 which transforms every block orthogonally and outputs "coefficients" of the number which is the same with that of the sampled values inputted thereto. One of the "coefficients" is a mean component (that is, a DC component or "coefficient") and all of the other are variation components (AC components or "coefficients") Moreover, the output signals of the orthogonal transforming device 3 representing the DC and the AC "coefficients" are supplied to a first normalizing device 4 of which an operation will be described in detail hereinlater. The first normalizing device 4 effects the interblock normalization of the inputted DC "coefficients" and the inputted AC "coefficients" by using different methods, respectively. Furthermore, the first normalizing device 4 outputs the DC "coefficients" and AC "coefficients" normalized as described above. Incidentally, the concrete normalizing methods are detailedly described in Japanese Patent Applications Provisional Publication Nos. 63-56867 and 63-62417. Therefore, detail descriptions of the normalizing methods are omitted herein. Next, the output signals of the first normalizing device 4 representing the DC "coefficients" and the AC "coefficients" are supplied to the quantizing device 5 whereupon the DC coefficients" are quantized. Further, the quantized signals are supplied from the quantizing device 5 through an output terminal 6 to a decoding system as DC information. On the other hand, the output signals of the first normalizing device 4 representing the AC "coefficients" are supplied to a second normalizing device 7 of which an operation will be described hereinlater. The second normalizing device 7 normalizes the AC "coefficients" every block and outputs the normalized AC "coefficients". Then, the output signals of the second normalizing device 7 representing the normalized AC "coefficients" are fed to a quantizing device 8. Further, output signals of the device 8 representing the quantized signals are supplied through a terminal 9 to the decoding system as AC information. Additionally, information on the maximum value and the minimum value of the "coefficients" is necessary for the decoding system. Thus, quantized normalizing information outputted from the first normalizing device 4 and the second normalizing device 7 is supplied through the respective output terminals 10 and 11 to the decoding system. Next, an operation of the first normalizing device 4 will be described hereinbelow by referring to Figs. 2 and 3. First, as shown in Fig. 2, the output signals of the orthogonal transforming device 3 representing the DC "coefficients" and the AC "coefficients" are inputted to input terminals 12 and 13, respectively. This is because the properties of the DC "coefficients" are different from those of the AC "coefficients" and thus a method for processing of the DC "coefficients" should be different from a method for processing of the AC "coefficients" as will be described hereunder. One DC "coefficient" represents an average of the sampled values within one of block and therefore is processed by using the maximum and the minimum values in a method which is the same as a method for normalizing the common sampled values. On the other hand, in case of the AC "coefficients", an average value of the plurality of the AC "coefficients" approximates 0 and is not taken into consideration. Thus, absolute values of the AC "coefficients" are processed. For example, in case of one-dimensional fourth-order orthogonal transform, one DC "coefficient" and three AC "coefficients" are outputted from the orthogonal transforming device 3 with respect to each of a plurality of blocks (in this case, four blocks) as shown in Fig. 3 (A). Hereinafter, an operation of the normalizing device 4 will be described in such a case by way of example. Fig. 3 (B) shows only the DC "coefficients". Further, the DC "coefficients" are supplied to a minimum value detecting device 14 and to a maximum value detecting device 15 whereupon the minimum value and the maximum value of the DC " coefficients" of blocks serially inputted. Upon completion of the detection, the detecting devices 14 and 15 are reset by a resetting signal for processing of signals representing the sampled values, which signals are inputted to the normalizing device 4 next time. Further, the thus detected maximum and minimum values are supplied to a subtractor 16 whereupon the minimum value is subtracted from the maximum value to obtain a value of a difference d₁ between them as shown in Fig. 3 (B). On the other hand, the signals representing the AC " coefficients" are supplied to an absolute-value computing device 17 whereupon the twelve AC "coefficients" (obtained by putting three AC "coefficients" of each of blocks Nos. 1 through 4 together) are transduced to absolute values thereof. As the peak values of the AC "coefficients" transduced to the absolute values are reduced to half in comparison with the peak-to-peak values of the untransduced AC "coefficients", the values obtained by doubling such peak values are outputted from the device 17, as shown in Fig. 3 (C). The output signals of the absolute-value computing device 17 are then supplied to a maximum-value detecting device 18 whereupon a maximum value d₂ of the AC "coefficients" of serially inputted blocks Nos. 1 thru 4 is detected. Thereafter, the device 18 is reset by a resetting signal for input of the next signals representing sampled values. Both of the value of the difference d₁ of the DC "coefficients" and the maximum value d₂ of the AC "coefficients" represent variation values. Therefore, the values d₁ and d₂ have similar properties and can be treated in common with each other. Thus, both of the signals representing the values d₁ and d₂ are fed to a non-additive mixer (NAM) 19 whereupon a larger one is selected from them as a variation value d₃. The NAM operates in such a manner to select a larger one of the values represented by two input signals simultaneously inputted thereto and to output a signal representing the selected value. The variation value d₃ and the minimum value (that is, the representative level value) detected by the minimum value detecting device 14 are supplied to a vector quantization device 20 which carries out vector quantization of the values inputted thereto. Thereby, the quantity of data can be substantially reduced. Incidentally, the number of bits required for quantization can be further reduced by a two-dimensional vector quantization system proposed by Applicant of the instant application in Japanese Patent Application Provisional Publication No. 63-62417. Further, the representative level value and the variation value quantized by the vector quantization device 20 are supplied by way of the output terminal 10 to the decoding system as the normalizing information and also to an original signal regenerating device 21 whereupon the original signals are regenerated from the quantized signals, and the minimum value (that is, the value of the representative level) m and the variation value Vd, of which data are reduced, are obtained. Moreover, output signals of the regenerating device 21 representing the minimum value m are supplied to a subtracter 22. Furthermore, the signals inputted from the input terminal 12 representing the DC "coefficient" are fed to a delay device 23. Thus, output signals of the delay device 23 are delayed by an appropriate time until processing of all of the "coefficients" is completed and are then supplied to the subtracter 22 which subtracts the minimum value m indicated by the output signal of the regenerating device 21 from the DC "coefficients" indicated by the output signal of the delay device 23 and thus obtains DC "coefficients" Ca. By this operation, the minimum value of the DC "coefficient" becomes 0 and the levels of the DC "coefficients" are shifted throughout. Thus, excessive or unnecessary data are reduced. Further, the output signals of the subtracter 22 representing the DC "coefficients" Ca and those of the regenerating device 21 representing the variation value Vd are supplied to a divider 24 whereupon the following division is effected: Ca ÷ Vd. Thus, the DC "coefficients" are normalized such that the quantity of the DC "coefficients" are fallen within a range from 0 to 1. Signals representing the normalized DC "coefficients" are outputted from an output terminal 25. On the other hand, the signals representing the AC " coefficients" are supplied from the input terminal 13 to a delay device 26 and delayed by an appropriate time until processing of all of the "coefficients". Furthermore, the output signals of the delay device 26 representing the AC "coefficients" Cb are supplied to a divider 27 whereupon the following division is effected by using the variation value Vd indicated by the output signals of the regenerating device 21: Cb ÷ Vd. Thus, the AC "coefficients" are normalized such that the quantities of the AC "coefficients" are fallen within a range from 0 to 1. Signals representing the normalized AC "coefficients" are outputted from an output terminal 28. Next, an operation of the second normalizing device 7 will be described hereinbelow by referring to Figs. 4 and 5. As shown in Fig. 4, the output signals of the first normalizing device 4 representing the AC "coefficients" are inputted from an input terminal 29 to an absolute-value computing device 30 whereupon the absolute-values of the AC " coefficients" are computed. Further, output signals of the absolute-value computing device 30 are supplied to a maximum-value detecting device 31 whereupon the maximum values d₄ of the AC "coefficients" of each of the blocks Nos. 1 thru 4 are detected. Then, the maximum value detecting device 31 is reset by resetting the signal for receiving the next sampled values. Furthermore, the signals representing the maximum values d₄ are fed to a quantizing device 32 whereby excessive or unnecessary data are reduced. Incidentally, in case of the second normalizing device 7, only AC "coefficients" are processed. Further, there is only one value per block as the normalizing information. Thus, in this case, the quantization is not vector quantization but scalar quantization. Thereby, the construction of the system can be simplified. Output signals of the quantizing device 32 are supplied through the output terminal 11 to the decoding system as signals indicating the normalizing information and also supplied to an original signal regenerating device 33 whereupon the original signals are regenerated or reproduced from the quantized signals. Thus, is obtained a variation value Ve of which data are reduced. The output signals of the regenerating device 33 indicating the variation value Ve are fed to a divider 35. In the meantime, the signals inputted from the input terminal 29 representing the AC "coefficients" are supplied to a delay device 34 and delayed by an appropriate time. The, output signals of the delay device 34 indicating the AC "coefficients" Cf are supplied to the divider 35 whereupon the following division is effected by using the variation value Ve indicated by the output signals of the regenerating device 33: Cf ÷ Ve. Thus, the AC "coefficients" are normalized by using the variation value Ve. Signals representing the normalized AC "coefficients" are outputted from an output terminal 36. Therefore, the above processing by the second normalizing device is effected such that the maximum of the absolute values of "coefficients" of each block is constant. Thereby, in comparison with the conventional coding, more accurate normalization of the "coefficients" of each block is achieved by effecting the first and second normalizing processing as above described. As a result, in case of the highly efficient coding system of the present invention, the normalization is effected twice on the variation components. Further, the precision of the normalization to be effected by each of the first and the second normalizing devices may be lower than that of the normalization in case where the normalization is effected only one time as in the conventional coding system. Thus, in case of the highly efficient coding system of the present invention, the quantity of data or information required for normalization is not so large. Further, as described above, in the embodiment of the first normalizing device of Fig. 2, the minimum value is supplied to the vector quantization device as the representative value. It is, however, apparent to those skilled in the art that the maximum value or the mean value may be supplied in place of the minimum value to the vector quantization device as the representative value. Moreover, the highly efficient coding system of the present invention can achieve high efficiency which is substantially equal to the efficiency of the conventional coding system even in case of using blocks of a size smaller than the size of blocks used for an orthogonal transform in the conventional coding system. Furthermore, a highly efficient coding system according to the present invention using blocks of such a size for orthogonal transform can have normalizing information and realize adaptive quantization using normalizing information.

Claims: An efficient image signal coding system comprising: blocking means (2) for dividing input signals representing sampled values into a plurality of blocks; orthogonal transformation means (3) for performing an orthogonal transformation on each block of signals output from said blocking means (2), dividing the results of said orthogonal transformation representing each block into a first component representing the mean value of the input signals of the block and the other components, and outputting the first and other components; and first normalising means (4) for effecting normalisation of said components output from said orthogonal transformation means (3), characterised in that for a plurality of blocks said first normalising means (4) is for effecting inter-block normalisation wherein a first normalisation of each of said first components of each block of said plurality is effected and a second normalisation of each of said other components of each block of said plurality is effected, and in that said system further comprises second normalising means (7) for effecting further normalisation of said other components of each block output from said first normalising means, wherein said second normalising means effects the normalisation of each block separately. A system according to claim 1, wherein the said first components of said blocks of said plurality are normalised by subtracting a constant value (m) which is representative of said first components of said blocks of said plurality and scaling by a variation value (V d ) and said other components of said blocks of said plurality are normalised only by scaling by the same variation value (V d ). A system according to claim 1 or 2, wherein said first normalising means (4) includes vector quantisation means (20) for quantising a representative value (m) and a variation value (V d ) which is the larger of, on one hand, twice the maximum absolute value of said other components of all said blocks of said plurality and the difference between the maximum and minimum values of said first components of all said blocks of said plurality. A system according to claim 2 or 3, wherein said constant representative value (m) is the minimum value of said first components of all said blocks of said plurality. A system according to any one of claims 2, 3 and 4, wherein said first normalising means (4) further comprises regenerating means (21) for regenerating the original said constant representative value and the original said variation value from the quantised representative value and the quantised variation value and outputting said regenerated values, and subtracting means (22) for subtracting said regenerated representative value from the value of said first components. A system according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein said second normalising means (7) includes quantising means (32) for quantising the maximum absolute value of said other components of each of the blocks.

Inventors: SUGIYAMA KENJI, SUGIYAMA, KENJI
Applicants: VICTOR COMPANY OF JAPAN, VICTOR COMPANY OF JAPAN, LIMITED
Application year: 1989
Main classification: H04N7
IPC codes: H04N7, H04B14, G06T9, H03M7