Optimized Multiple Description Lattice Vector Quantization Coding for 3D Depth Image

Multiple Description (MD) coding is a promising alternative for the robust transmission of information over error-prone channels. Lattice vector quantization (LVQ) is a significant version of MD techniques to design an MD image coder. However, different from the traditional 2D texture image, the 3D depth image has its own special characteristics, which should be taken into account for efficient compression. In this paper, an optimized MDLVQ scheme is proposed in view of the characteristics of 3D depth image. First, due to the sparsity of depth image, the image blocks can be classified into edge blocks and smooth blocks, which are encoded by different modes. Furthermore, according to the boundary contents in edge blocks, the step size of LVQ can be regulated adaptively for each block. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which show better rate distortion performance compared with the conventional MDLVQ.