Spline-based dense medial descriptors for lossy image compression

Medial descriptors are of significant interest for image simplification, representation, manipulation, and compression. On the other hand, B-splines are well-known tools for specifying smooth curves in computer graphics and geometric design. In this paper, we integrate the two by modeling medial descriptors with stable and accurate B-splines for image compression. Representing medial descriptors with B-splines can not only greatly improve compression but is also an effective vector representation of raster images. A comprehensive evaluation shows that our Spline-based Dense Medial Descriptors (SDMD) method achieves much higher compression ratios at similar or even better quality to the well-known JPEG technique. We illustrate our approach with applications in generating super-resolution images and salient feature preserving image compression.