Patent ID: 7224845

Claim:
A method for multispectral image compression comprising the steps of: sub-optimally mapping the multispectral image into a 2-dimensional array such that the most highly correlated points are near to one another, said sub-optimal mapping step including the steps of (1) selecting the pixels of the band that have the highest spatial correlation; (2) on each side of the pixel set, attaching the pixels corresponding to the band and that has the highest spectral correlation with respect to the band found in the previous step; (3) on each side of the resultant array, inserting the pixels corresponding to the band that has not been merged yet that has the highest spectral correlation with respect to the samples added in Step (2); and, (4) repeating the previous step up to all the bands that are multiplexed into a single band, such that the sub-optimal bijection mapping is to keep, as close as possible, those pixels that have a high correlation; and, then applying an image coding algorithm to said 2-dimensional array, whereby enhanced performance is achieved at high compression rates wherever cross-band correlation is high.