Prediction of compression-induced image interpretability degradation

Abstract

Image compression is an important component in modern imaging systems as the volume of the raw data collected is increasing. To reduce the volume of data while collecting imagery useful for analysis, choosing the appropriate image compression method is desired. Lossless compression is able to preserve all the information, but it has limited reduction power. On the other hand, lossy compression, which may result in very high compression ratios, suffers from information loss. We model the compression-induced information loss in terms of the National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scale or NIIRS. NIIRS is a user-based quantification of image interpretability widely adopted by the Geographic Information System community. Specifically, we present the Compression Degradation Image Function Index (CoDIFI) framework that predicts the NIIRS degradation (i.e., a decrease of NIIRS level) for a given compression setting. The CoDIFI-NIIRS framework enables a user to broker the maximum compression setting while maintaining a specified NIIRS rating.