Hybrid scheme for efficient shape coding

A contour-based scheme for near lossless shape coding is proposed aiming to acquire high coding efficiency. For a given shape image, object contours are firstly extracted and then thinned to be perfect single-pixel width. Next they are transformed into chain-based representation and divided into different chain segments based on link directions. Thirdly, two fundamental coding modes are designed and developed to encode different types of chain segments, where the spatial correlations within object contours are analyzed and exploited to improve the coding efficiency as high as possible. Finally, a fast and efficient mode selection method is introduced to select the one that can produce shorter code length out of the two modes for each chain segment. Experiments are conducted and the results show that the proposed scheme is considerably more efficient than the existing techniques.