Patent ID: 7245659

Claim:
An image encoding method, comprising: a pattern matching step searching for a waveform vector in a predetermined group of waveform vectors based upon inner products of the waveform vectors and a partial signal waveform of an image signal; and a waveform pattern encoding step performing a compression encoding for information to identify the waveform vector searched for, an inner product value of the partial signal waveform and the waveform vector searched for, and a position in an image of the partial signal waveform in accordance with a predetermined encoding rule, wherein in a process in which the pattern matching step and the waveform pattern encoding step are iterated until a predetermined condition is satisfied, whenever encoding information is obtained at the waveform pattern encoding step, a reconstructed waveform of a partial signal waveform obtained from the encoding information is subtracted from the image signal so as to produce an image signal to be provided to the pattern matching step, and the image signal is encoded according to the encoding information obtained at the waveform pattern encoding step until the predetermined condition is satisfied, and wherein the position in the image of the partial signal waveform is encoded through replacement with position information in a predetermined partial domain of the image signal.