A Fast Algorithm for Fractal Image Coding

In this paper, we propose a fast algorithm for fractal image coding to shorten long time to take on fractal image encoding. For its performance evaluation, the algorithm compares with other traditional fractal coding methods. In the traditional fractal image coding methods, an original image is contracted by a factor in order to make an image to be matched. Then, the whole area of the contracted image is searched in order to find contractive transformation point of the original image corresponding to the contacted image. It needs a lot of searching time on encoding and remains limitation in the improvement of compression ratio. However, the proposed algorithm not only considerably reduces encoding tin e by using scaling method and limited search area method but also improves compression ratio by using bit-plane. When comparing the proposed algorithm with Jacquin's method, the proposed algorithm provides much shorter encoding time and better compression ratio with a little degradation of the decoded image quality than Jacquin's method.