Proceedings of International Conference on Advancements in Engineering and Technology

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Performance Analysis of Discrete Cosine

Transform based image compression
S.VIJAYARAGHAVAN1, M.A.ARCHANA2, Dr.C.PARTHASARATHY3
1, 2
Research Scholars, 3 Assistant Professor-II,
SCSVMV University.
professorvijayece@gmail.com, maarchaname@gmail.com, drsarathy45@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Image compression is one of the most important
criteria in multimedia applications. Compression allows
efficient utilization of channel bandwidth and storage size.
Typical access speeds for storage mediums are inversely
proportional to capacity. Through data compression, such
tasks can be optimized. Image compression is a part of that
data compression. The discrete cosine transform (DCT) is
a technique for converting a signal into elementary
frequency components. Here we develop some simple
functions to compute the DCT and to compress images.
Different images are taken for compression using DCT
and the performance parameters are analyzed using Mat
lab. Image Compression is studied using 2-D discrete
Cosine Transform. The original image is transformed in
different window sizes. The implementation of this work
was successful on achieving significant PSNR values.
Keywords: Discrete Cosine Transform, Pixels, Bit Rate,
Mean Square Error, Signal to Noise Ratio, PSNR

information. The basic objective of image compression is to

find an image representation in which pixels are less
correlated. The two fundamental principles used in image
compression are redundancy and irrelevancy. Redundancy
removes redundancy from the signal source and irrelevancy
omits pixel values which are not noticeable by human eye.
JPEG and JPEG 2000 are two important techniques used for
image compression.
Work on international standards for image
compression started in the late 1970s with the CCITT
(currently ITU-T) need to standardize binary image
compression algorithms for Group 3 facsimile
communications. Since then, many other committees and
standards have been formed to produce de jure standards
(such as JPEG), while several commercially successful
initiatives have effectively become de facto standards (such
as GIF). Image compression standards bring about many
benefits, such as: (1) easier exchange of image files between
different devices and applications; (2) reuse of existing
hardware and software for a wider array of products; (3)
existence of benchmarks and reference data sets for new and
alternative developments

INTRODUCTION
Image compression is very important for efficient
transmission and storage of images. Demand for
communication of multimedia data through the
telecommunications network and accessing the multimedia
data through Internet is growing explosively. With the use
of digital cameras, requirements for storage, manipulation,
and transfer of digital images, has grown explosively.
These image files can be very large and can occupy a lot of
memory. A gray scale image that is 256 x 256 pixels has 65,
536 elements to store, and a a typical 640 x 480 color image
has nearly a million. Downloading of these files from
internet can be very time consuming task. Image data
comprise of a significant portion of the multimedia data and
they occupy the major portion of the communication
bandwidth for multimedia communication. Therefore
development of efficient techniques for image compression
has become quite necessary. A common characteristic of
most images is that the neighboring pixels are highly
correlated and therefore contain highly redundant

ISBN NO : 978 - 1502893314

IMAGE COMPRESSION
The need for image compression becomes apparent
when number of bits per image is computed resulting from
typical sampling rates and quantization methods. For
example, the amount of storage required for given images is
(i) a low resolution, TV quality, color video image which
has 512 x 512 pixels/color,8 bits/pixel, and 3 colors
approximately consists of 6 x 10 bits;(ii) a 24 x 36 mm
negative photograph scanned at 12 x 10mm:3000 x 2000
pixels/color, 8 bits/pixel, and 3 colors nearly contains 144 x
10 bits; (3) a 14 x 17 inch radiograph scanned at 70 x
10mm: 5000 x 6000 pixels, 12 bits/pixel nearly contains
360 x 10 bits. Thus storage of even a few images could
cause a problem. As another example of the need for image
compression, consider the transmission of low resolution
512 x 512 x 8 bits/pixel x 3-color video image over
telephone lines. Using a 96000 bauds (bits/sec) modem, the
transmission would take approximately 11 minutes for just a
single image, which is unacceptable for most applications.

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advancements in Engineering and Technology

Figure 1 Block Diagram of Image Compression

Principle
Number of bits required to represent the
information in an image can be minimized by removing the
redundancy present in it. There are three types of
redundancies:
(i) Spatial redundancy, which is due to the correlation or
dependence between neighboring pixel values.
(ii) Spectral redundancy, which is due to the correlation
between different color planes or spectral bands.
(iii) Temporal redundancy, which is present because of
correlation between different frames in images.
Image compression research aims to reduce the
number of bits required to represent an image by removing
the spatial and spectral redundancies as much as possible.
Data redundancy is of central issue in digital image
compression. If n1 and n2 denote the number of information
carrying units in original and compressed image
respectively ,then the compression ratio CR can be defined
as CR=n1/n2;And relative data redundancy RD of the
original image can be defined as RD=1-1/CR;
Three possibilities arise here:
(1) If n1=n2, then CR=1 and hence RD=0 which implies
that original image do not contain any redundancy between
the pixels.
(2) If n1>>n1, then CR and hence RD>1 which implies
considerable amount of redundancy in the original image.
(3) If n1<<n2, then CR>0 and hence RD- which
indicates that the compressed image contains more data than
original image.
Types of compression
Lossless versus Lossy compression: In lossless
compression schemes, the reconstructed image, after
compression, is numerically identical to the original image.

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However lossless compression can only a achieve a modest

amount of compression. Lossless compression is preferred
for archival purposes and often medical imaging, technical
drawings, clip art or comics. This is because lossy
compression methods, especially when used at low bit rates,
introduce compression artifacts. An image reconstructed
following lossy compression contains degradation relative
to the original. Often this is because the compression
scheme completely discards redundant information.
However, lossy schemes are capable of achieving much
higher compression. Lossy methods are especially suitable
for natural images such as photos in applications where
minor (sometimes imperceptible) loss of fidelity is
acceptable to achieve a substantial reduction in bit rate. The
lossy compression that produces imperceptible differences
can be called visually lossless.
Predictive versus Transform coding: In predictive
coding, information already sent or available is used to
predict future values, and the difference is coded. Since this
is done in the image or spatial domain, it is relatively simple
to implement and is readily adapted to local image
characteristics. Differential Pulse Code Modulation
(DPCM) is one particular example of predictive coding.
Transform coding, on the other hand, first transforms the
image from its spatial domain representation to a different
type of representation using some well-known transform
and then codes the transformed values (coefficients). This
method provides greater data compression compared to
predictive methods, although at the expense of greater
DISCRETE COSINE TRANSFORM BASED IMAGE
COMPRESSION
Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) exploits cosine
functions, it transform a signal from spatial representation
into frequency domain. The DCT represents an image as a
sum of sinusoids of varying magnitudes and frequencies.
DCT has the property that, for a typical image most of the
visually significant information about an image is
concentrated in just few coefficients of DCT. After the
computation of DCT coefficients, they are normalized
according to a quantization table with different scales
provided by the JPEG standard computed by psycho visual
evidence. Selection of quantization table affects the entropy
and compression ratio. The value of quantization is
inversely proportional to quality of reconstructed image,
better mean square error and better compression ratio. In a
lossy compression technique, during a step called
Quantization, the less important frequencies are discarded,
then the most important frequencies that remain are used to
retrieve the image in decomposition process. After
quantization, quantized coefficients are rearranged in a
zigzag order for further compressed by an efficient lossy
coding algorithm.

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advancements in Engineering and Technology

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Let us present here briefly the computation technique for

DCTs of an image. The definition of DCT for a 2D images
x (m,n) of size NxN is as follows:

C k , l m0 n0 4 xm, n cos 2 m2K1k cos 2 n2N1l

N 1

N 1

Th

0 k, l N 1
e low-low sub band xLL (m,n) of the image be obtained as:

x LL ( m , n )

1
4

{ x ( 2 m , 2 n ) x ( 2 m 1, 2 n )

( 2 m , 2 n 1) x ( 2 m 1, 2 n 1 )},
0 m,n

N
2

Figure 2 BUILDING- original image

1.

Let CLL (k,l), 0 < k,l < N/2-1 be the 2D DCT of xLL(m,n).
Then the sub band approximation of DCT of x(m,n) is given
by:

4cos(2Nk ) cos(2Nl )CLL (k, l), k, l 0,1,......,N2 1

C(k,l)
0,
otherwise

It may be noted that depending upon the definition of DCT,

sub band DCTs are multiplied by a factor (in this

k l
cos
). The definition of inverse
2N 2N

case 4 cos

Figure 3 BUILDING- Gray scale image

DCT (IDCT) should also be modified accordingly. We refer

this as sub band approximation of DCT as
k , l 0 ,1 ,......, N2 1
4 C LL ( k , l ),
C (k , l)
0,
otherwise

We refer this approximation as the low-pass truncated

approximation of DCT. Interestingly, the multiplication
factor 4 appears due to the definition of DCT used in this
work. However, this factor does not have any effect in the
final results obtained by them (PSNR values of downsized
(halved) and then upsized. While halving an image, DCT
coefficients for N/2-point DCT are obtained by dividing the
N-point DCT coefficients.

Figure 4 BUILDING- DCT image

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Experimentations are carried out for studying the
performances of the three different images compressed at
different levels. In the context of the JPEG compression, the
effect of quantization on the approximated coefficients
during image-halving or image-doubling should be observed
here. The PSNR values for different compression levels for
the Building, BMW car, and Peacock images were plotted in
Figures as shown below. The performance of Bit Rate,
Mean Square Error, Signal to Noise Ratio, PSNR values for
the images is also tabulated.

ISBN NO : 978 - 1502893314

Figure 5 BMW CAR- original image

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advancements in Engineering and Technology

Figure 6 BMW CAR- Gray scale image

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Figure 10 PEACOCKDCT Image

200
150

PEACOCK

100

BMW CAR

50

BUILDING

0
0.5

0.75

Figure 7 BMW CAR - DCT image

Figure 11 Bit rate (bps) vs. PSNR (dB) for DCT based
image compression of Peacock, BMW car and Buildings
images
TABLE I - Performance Analysis

Image

Figure 8 PEACOCK- original image

Building

BMW
Car

Figure 9 PEACOCK- Gray scale image

Peacock

ISBN NO : 978 - 1502893314

Bit
Rate
(bps)

Mean
Square
Error

Signal
To
Noise
Ratio
(db)

PSNR(db)

0.5
0.75
1
2
4
0.5
0.75
1
2
4
0.5
0.75
1
2
4

114.6
60.9
47.9
6.6
0.2
36.5
175.9
124.6
30.8
0.9
302.2
232.2
164.5
33.9
2.5

13.7
16.4
17.5
26.1
42.4
14.1
15.4
16.9
23.0
38.6
9.4
10.5
12.0
18.9
30.2

27.5
30.3
31.3
39.9
56.2
24.4
25.7
27.2
33.2
48.8
23.3
24.5
26.0
32.8
44.2

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Proceedings of International Conference on Advancements in Engineering and Technology

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CONCLUSION
[9]

DCT based Image compression transform is

an efficient technique for obtaining better quality of
image in multimedia applications. The Performance
analysis of three different images illustrates that the
PSNR value varies for different bit rates and it also
shows that there is a better performance of mean
square error and for various bit rate. The outputs
were obtained using MATLAB 8.
The future of this is that it can be implemented using
FPGA.

NageswaraRaoThota, Srinivasa Kumar Devireddy.

Image Compression Using Discrete Cosine
Transform Georgian Electronic Scientific Journal:
Computer Science and Telecommunications 3
(2008).
[10] Saraswathy, K., D. Vaithiyanathan, and R.
Seshasayanan. A DCT approximation with low
complexity
for
image
compression
Communications and Signal Processing (ICCSP),
2013 International Conference on. IEEE, 2013.

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