An improved no-search fractal image coding method based on a fitting plane

In this paper a fast and efficient no-search fractal image coding method based on a modified gray-level transform which uses a fitting plane is presented. The improved gray-level transform can reduce the minimum matching error between a given range block and its corresponding domain block, and thus, it can enhance the possibility of successful domain-range matching. In comparison with our previous scheme which uses an adaptive plane, the improved scheme results in a considerable acceleration of the encoding process, decreases the compression ratio and improves the quality of the reconstructed images in the meanwhile. Comparing with Furao’s no-search scheme, our improved scheme can get higher PSNR at higher bpp and almost the same PSNR at lower bpp. Although it uses more transform coefficients, such a fitting plane method can speed up the encoding process with the quality of the reconstructed images improved.