Patent ID: 8326053

Claim:
A method adapted for use in an image compression apparatus to compress an input image comprising a plurality of pixels, the method comprising: partitioning said input image into a plurality of original blocks, each comprising a selected subset of the pixels comprising said input image; decomposing each of said original blocks to generate a respective one of a plurality of decomposed blocks; compressing each of said decomposed blocks to generate a respective one of a plurality of compressed blocks; and combining all of said plurality of compressed blocks to generate an output image; wherein said decomposing further comprises: applying a function to an original value of each of said pixels comprising each of said original blocks to obtain a decomposed value selected to reduce the amount of space needed to encode said original value; and wherein compressing each of said plurality of decomposed blocks comprises the steps of: determining a best fit curve for said decomposed values; storing two end point values selected on said best fit curve; and storing an index value for each of said pixels in said decomposed block wherein each of said index values comprises a respective one of a plurality of points selected on said best fit curve.