Image compression using integrated lossless/lossy methods

A new compression scheme is described that aims at improving the fidelity of reconstructed images through the parallel application of both lossless and lossy compression techniques. The purpose of the scheme is to obtain compression ratios higher than those obtained by lossless compression schemes and at the same time produce reconstructed images with better fidelity than those normally obtained with lossy techniques. Tests so far have shown that the integrated lossless/lossy (IL/L) compression scheme consistently improves the fidelity of reconstructed images compared to well-known image compression algorithms. Specifically, the new scheme gives better fidelity (20% to 55% reduction in mean square error) than the DCT algorithm under equal compression ratios.>