A two-valued object such as black-and-white textural or pictorial material is repeatedly scanned aong each of a plurality of line paths within the object to produce an image signal which is representative of a series of black and white runs or areas within the line path. The length of black or white run or "run length" is sampled by clock pulses and translated into a binary code and transmitted bit by bit at the line scan rate to a receiver station. A vertical sync pulse is inserted at the end of the (n-1)th run length wherein n represents the number of run lengths within the image signal so that the last run length is skipped. The last run length so skipped at the transmitter is reconstructed at the receiver during the time interval of the vertical sync pulse.
