Variable-rate colour image quantization based on quadtree segmentation

A novel variable-sized block encoding with threshold control for colour image quantization (CIQ) is presented in this paper. In CIQ, the colour palette used has a great influence on the reconstructed image quality. Typically, a higher image quality and a larger storage cost are obtained when a larger-sized palette is used in CIQ. To cut down the storage cost while preserving quality of the reconstructed images, the threshold control policy for quadtree segmentation is used in this paper. Experimental results show that the proposed method adaptively provides desired bit rates while having better image qualities comparing to CIQ with the usage of multiple palettes of different sizes.