IMAGE CODING METHOD AND DEVICE, AND IMAGE DECODING METHOD AND DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image coding technology that can compress an image with a statistic property different from that of a natural image such as a pathological image with a high efficiency while preventing visual deterioration. SOLUTION: The image coder adopts a configuration that reversible color conversion employing the reversible KL conversion realized by a ladder circuit network is applied to an image to code the converted image in a form of reversible conversion. Thus, the image coder can efficiently apply reversible conversion to an image with a statistic property different from that of a natural image such as a pathological image and an image with high quality can be stored on a disk with a small disk capacity. Furthermore, the coder adopts a configuration of conducting the reversible coding in a scalable way. Thus, the image decoder of this invention can flexibly decode an image in response to a network transmission band and the coding technology suitable for a remote medical treatment or the like can be provided.