Patent ID: 7436888

Claim:
An apparatus for redundant image encoding, the apparatus comprising: a slice modeling unit which divides image data of an image into a plurality of regions and determines which of the regions are to be redundantly encoded, and determines one of a plurality of structures for each of a plurality of slices to be used in encoding the regions of the image; a slice allocation unit which allocates each region of the image to at least one of the slices according to the slice structures, wherein the slice allocation unit allocates each of the regions to be redundantly encoded to more than one of the slices; a picture header encoding unit which encodes picture header information comprising information required to decode encoded slices of the image; and a slice encoding unit which encodes the allocated image regions into encoded slices according to the picture header information, wherein the slice encoding unit encodes the regions allocated to be redundantly encoded into more than one encoded slice; and wherein the slice structure corresponds to a shape of each of the plurality of slices.