Patent ID: 7206458

Claim:
A method for compressing a digital image, the method comprising: a) acquiring the image in a CFA format; b) performing a full-resolution expansion of the CFA image to generate a complete image having at least one plane; c) synthesizing for the at least one plane of the complete image a quantization matrix by selecting an arbitrary starting matrix Qst, such quantization matrix having elements which are quantization coefficients associated with particular spatial frequencies on the basis of their position; d) assigning to each spatial frequency a statistical measure of the error introduced into said spatial frequency by said at least full-resolution expansion performed on the at least one plane; e) modifying the matrix Qst by multiplying each of its elements by an appropriate weighting coefficient that is a function of the statistical error measure assigned to the corresponding spatial frequency; f) transforming the at least one plane of the complete image into a two-dimensional spatial-frequency domain using a discrete transform; and g) quantizing the at least one transformed plane using the modified matrix Qst.