# Lightweight Image Codec via Multi-Grid Multi-Block-Size Vector Quantization (MGBVQ)

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.12139 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12139/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Billion-scale similarity search with GPUs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08734/) (2017)
- [An Introduction to Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02691/) (2019)
- [Variational image compression with a scale hyperprior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01436/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Optimized Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01704/) (2016)
- [Density Modeling of Images using a Generalized Normalization Transformation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06281/) (2015)
- [Image and Video Compression with Neural Networks: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03567/) (2019)
- [PixelHop++: A Small Successive-Subspace-Learning-Based (SSL-based) Model for Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03141/) (2020)
- [Holopix50k: A Large-Scale In-the-wild Stereo Image Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.11172/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A multi-grid multi-block-size vector quantization (MGBVQ) method is proposed for image coding in this work. The fundamental idea of image coding is to remove correlations among pixels before quantization and entropy coding, e.g., the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and intra predictions, adopted by modern image coding standards. We present a new method to remove pixel correlations. First, by decomposing correlations into long- and short-range correlations, we represent long-range correlations in coarser grids due to their smoothness, thus leading to a multi-grid (MG) coding architecture. Second, we show that short-range correlations can be effectively coded by a suite of vector quantizers (VQs). Along this line, we argue the effectiveness of VQs of very large block sizes and present a convenient way to implement them. It is shown by experimental results that MGBVQ offers excellent rate-distortion (RD) performance, which is comparable with existing image coders, at much lower complexity. Besides, it provides a progressive coded bitstream.