An Integrated Representation & Compression Scheme Based on Convolutional Autoencoders with 4D DCT Perceptual Encoding for High Dynamic Range Light Fields

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel high dynamic range light field compression method that leverages 4D-DCT and HEVC encoding to achieve perceptually lossless results with superior compression efficiency.

Contribution

It presents a new 4D-DCT based compression scheme specifically designed for HDR light fields, combining inter/intra view correlation exploitation with HEVC encoding.

Findings

Outperforms JPEG-XL and HDR video codecs in compression efficiency

Achieves perceptually lossless compression of HDR light fields

Effectively reduces data size for real-world light field applications

Abstract

The emerging and existing light field displays are highly capable of realistic presentation of 3D scenes on auto-stereoscopic glasses-free platforms. The light field size is a major drawback while utilising 3D displays and streaming purposes. When a light field is of high dynamic range, the size increases drastically. In this paper, we propose a novel compression algorithm for a high dynamic range light field which yields a perceptually lossless compression. The algorithm exploits the inter and intra view correlations of the HDR light field by interpreting it to be a four-dimension volume. The HDR light field compression is based on a novel 4DDCT-UCS (4D-DCT Uniform Colour Space) algorithm. Additional encoding of 4DDCT-UCS acquired images by HEVC eliminates intra-frame, inter-frame and intrinsic redundancies in HDR light field data. Comparison with state-of-the-art coders like JPEG-XL and HDR video coding algorithm exhibits superior compression performance of the proposed scheme for real-world light fields.