Patent ID: 8285063

Claim:
A method of compressing a block of image elements, each image element having an associated normalized feature vector present in a normalization sub-region of a vector feature space, said method comprising the steps of: identifying, based on at least a portion of said normalized feature vectors, a base vector in said normalization sub-region; coding, if a position-determining coordinate of said base vector is present in a defined selection section of said feature vector space, at least one image element of said block according to a default compression mode and an auxiliary compression mode; selecting the compression mode of said default compression mode and said auxiliary compression mode based on a default compression mode error and an auxiliary compression mode error; and mapping, if said selected compression mode is said auxiliary compression mode, said position-determining coordinate to get a mapped position-determining coordinate present in a mapped selection section positioned outside of said normalization sub-region, wherein a compressed representation of said block comprises a representation of said mapped position-determining coordinate if said selected compression mode is said auxiliary compression mode and a representation of said position-determining coordinate if said selected compression mode is said default compression mode.