Improved JPEG Coding by Filtering 8 × 8 DCT Blocks

The JPEG format, consisting of a set of image compression techniques, is one of the most commonly used image coding standards for both lossy and lossless image encoding. In this format, various techniques are used to improve image transmission and storage. In the final step of lossy image coding, JPEG uses either arithmetic or Huffman entropy coding modes to further compress data processed by lossy compression. Both modes encode all the 8 × 8 DCT blocks without filtering empty ones. An end-of-block marker is coded for empty blocks, and these empty blocks cause an unnecessary increase in file size when they are stored with the rest of the data. In this paper, we propose a modified version of the JPEG entropy coding. In the proposed version, instead of storing an end-of-block code for empty blocks with the rest of the data, we store their location in a separate buffer and then compress the buffer with an efficient lossless method to achieve a higher compression ratio. The size of the additional buffer, which keeps the information of location for the empty and non-empty blocks, was considered during the calculation of bits per pixel for the test images. In image compression, peak signal-to-noise ratio versus bits per pixel has been a major measure for evaluating the coding performance. Experimental results indicate that the proposed modified algorithm achieves lower bits per pixel while retaining quality.