Patent ID: 8743969

Claim:
An image decoding method using arithmetic decoding, the method comprising: determining a context for use in a current block, from among a plurality of contexts; performing arithmetic decoding on a bit sequence corresponding to the current block, using the determined context to decode a binary sequence, the bit sequence being obtained by performing arithmetic coding on a control parameter of the current block; and inversely binarizing the binary sequence to decode the control parameter of the current block, wherein the determining of a context includes: determining a signal type of the control parameter of the current block; determining the context under a first condition that decoded control parameters of neighboring blocks of the current block are used, when the signal type is a first type, the neighboring blocks being a left block and an upper block of the current block; and determining the context under a second condition that a predetermined fixed value is used and the decoded control parameters of the left block and the upper block are not used, when the signal type is a second type different from the first type, wherein the first type is one of (i) a flag indicating whether or not the current block is partitioned into a plurality of blocks and (ii) a flag indicating whether or not the current block is to be skipped, and the second type is a flag indicating whether or not a merge mode is used for the current block.