Light-Field Image Compression Based on a Two-Dimensional Prediction Coding Structure

Light-field images (LFIs) are gaining increased attention within the field of 3D imaging, virtual reality, and digital refocusing, owing to their wealth of spatial and angular information. The escalating volume of LFI data poses challenges in terms of storage and transmission. To address this problem, this paper introduces an MSHPE (most-similar hierarchical prediction encoding) structure based on light-field multi-view images. By systematically exploring the similarities among sub-views, our structure obtains residual views through the subtraction of the encoded view from its corresponding reference view. Regarding the encoding process, this paper implements a new encoding scheme to process all residual views, achieving lossless compression. High-efficiency video coding (HEVC) is applied to encode select residual views, thereby achieving lossy compression. Furthermore, the introduced structure is conceptualized as a layered coding scheme, enabling progressive transmission and showing good random access performance. Experimental results demonstrate the superior compression performance attained by encoding residual views according to the proposed structure, outperforming alternative structures. Notably, when HEVC is employed for encoding residual views, significant bit savings are observed compared to the direct encoding of original views. The final restored view presents better detail quality, reinforcing the effectiveness of this approach.