Data compression

Abstract

A method of compressing an array of data entries in the form of digital electronic signals, the method including determining a plurality of possible compressed encodings for each block of the array using a respective different compression technique for each encoding of the block, wherein each possible compressed encoding has a respective data size and a respective reconstruction error; and generating a list of the plurality of compressed encodings and selecting that one of the plurality of compressed encodings from the list which, when uncompressed and added to the reference data array, provides the largest relative improvement in reconstruction error per unit increase in data size. A compressed encoding of the original data array may then be updated by adding the selected compressed encoding, and a reference data array may be updated by adding the selected encoding in uncompressed form. These steps may be different combinations of macro block regions repeated recursively until a maximum data size is achieved for the compressed encoding of the original data array.