Sisvel Technology S.r.l.

Francesco Verdoja

Marco Grangetto

Enrico Magli

Giulia Fracastoro

A method for encoding digital images or video streams, includes a receiving phase, wherein a portion of an image is received; a graph weights prediction phase, wherein the elements of a weights matrix associated to the graph related to the blocks of the image (predicted blocks) are predicted on the basis of reconstructed, de-quantized and inverse-transformed pixel values of at least one previously coded block (predictor block) of the image, the weights matrix being a matrix comprising elements denoting the level of similarity between a pair of pixels composing said image, a graph transform computation phase, wherein the graph Fourier transform of the blocks of the image is performed, obtaining for the blocks a set of coefficients determined on the basis of the predicted weights; a coefficients quantization phase, wherein the coefficients are quantized an output phase wherein a bitstream comprising the transformed and quantized coefficients is transmitted and/or stored.

Method and apparatus for encoding and decoding digital images or video streams

The present invention relates to a method for encoding the borders of pixel regions of an image, wherein the borders contain a sequence of vertices subdividing the image into regions of pixels (superpixels), by generating a sequence of symbols from an alphabet including the step of: defining for each superpixel a first vertex for coding the borders of the superpixel according to a criterion common to all superpixels; defining for each superpixel the same coding order of the border vertices, either clockwise or counter-clockwise; defining the order for coding the superpixels on the base of a common rule depending on the relative positions of the first vertices; defining a set of vertices as a known border, wherein the following steps are performed for selecting a symbol of the alphabet, for encoding the borders of the superpixels: a) determining the first vertex of the next superpixel border individuated by the common criterion; b) determining the next vertex to be encoded on the basis of the coding direction; c) selecting a first symbol ('0') for encoding the next vertex if the next vertex of a border pertains to the known border, d) selecting a symbol ('1'; '2') different from the first symbol (&#x201c;0&#x201d;) if the next vertex is not in the known border; e) repeating steps b), c), d) and e) until all vertices of the superpixel border have been encoded; f) adding each vertex of the superpixel border that was not in the known border to the set; g) determining the next superpixel whose border is to be encoded according to the common rule, if any; i) repeating steps a)-g) until the borders of all the superpixels of the image have being added to the known border.

Methods and apparatuses for encoding and decoding superpixel borders

A method and an apparatus for encoding and/or decoding digital images or video streams are provided, wherein the encoding apparatus includes a processor configured for reading at least a portion of the image, segmenting the portion of the image in order to obtain groups of pixels identified by borders information and containing at least two pixels having one or more homogeneous characteristics, computing, for each group of pixels, a weight map on the basis of the borders information associated to the group of pixels, a graph transform matrix on the basis of the weight map, and transform coefficients on the basis of the graph transform matrix (U) and of the pixels contained in the group of pixels.

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Helsinki, Finland

Francesco Verdoja