English

Channel-wise Autoregressive Entropy Models for Learned Image Compression

Image and Video Processing 2020-07-20 v1 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Information Theory Machine Learning math.IT

Abstract

In learning-based approaches to image compression, codecs are developed by optimizing a computational model to minimize a rate-distortion objective. Currently, the most effective learned image codecs take the form of an entropy-constrained autoencoder with an entropy model that uses both forward and backward adaptation. Forward adaptation makes use of side information and can be efficiently integrated into a deep neural network. In contrast, backward adaptation typically makes predictions based on the causal context of each symbol, which requires serial processing that prevents efficient GPU / TPU utilization. We introduce two enhancements, channel-conditioning and latent residual prediction, that lead to network architectures with better rate-distortion performance than existing context-adaptive models while minimizing serial processing. Empirically, we see an average rate savings of 6.7% on the Kodak image set and 11.4% on the Tecnick image set compared to a context-adaptive baseline model. At low bit rates, where the improvements are most effective, our model saves up to 18% over the baseline and outperforms hand-engineered codecs like BPG by up to 25%.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.08739,
  title  = {Channel-wise Autoregressive Entropy Models for Learned Image Compression},
  author = {David Minnen and Saurabh Singh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.08739},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Published at the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) 2020

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:11:10.707Z