Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Distributed data processing – Client/server
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-31
2001-11-06
Meky, Moustafa M. (Department: 2757)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Distributed data processing
Client/server
C709S217000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06314452
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems and methods for transmission of still images over relatively low-speed communication channels. More specifically the invention relates to progressive image streaming over low speed communication lines, and may be applied to a variety of fields and disciplines, including commercial printing, medical imaging, among others.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
In a narrow bandwidth environment, a simple transfer to a client computer of any original image stored in a server's storage is obviously time consuming. In many cases the user only wishes to view a low resolution of the image and perhaps a few more high resolution details, and so a full image transfer is inefficient. This problem can be overcome by storing images in some compressed formats. Examples for such formats are standards such as Progressive JPEG, FlashPix, the upcoming JPEG2000, and some recent proprietary so-called wavelet formats. Some of these formats allow progressive transmission (of the full image) and some allow transmission of only region of interest (ROI) data, thereby avoiding the necessity to transmit the entire image before it can be rendered at the client side.
But there are at least three main problems with the existing solutions: first, one needs to prepare and store a compressed image of this type for any original image located in the storage. In many cases this results in storing both the original image and the compressed version. Sometimes the size of the file prepared for transmission is even larger than the original file. For example, a lossless FlashPix representation of a given image is typically {fraction (4/3)} the size of the original image. Secondly, the computation of any of the above formats is much more intensive than regular compression techniques such as the base-line version of JPEG. The last problem is that the existing methods generally do not support efficient extraction and transmission of ROI data, but rather the whole image in progressive mode. The FlashPix format that does support ROI streaming is not a wavelet-based format and therefore cannot take advantage (as wavelets do) of the relations between the various resolutions of the image.
The above-mentioned problems with the prior art result in inefficient systems both in architecture and data handling workflows. This tends to be the case for imaging applications such as in the graphics arts and medical environments, where image files are relatively large and they are created dynamically as external events dictate.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The imaging system that is described below is an image streaming system which is different from traditional compression systems and overcomes the above problems. It eliminates the necessity to store a compressed version of the original image, by streaming ROI data using the original stored image. The imaging system of the present invention also avoids the computationally intensive task of compression of the fall image. Instead, once a user wishes to interact with a remote image, the imaging server performs a fast preprocessing step in near real time after which it can respond to any ROI requests also in near real time. When a ROI request arrives at the server, a sophisticated progressive image encoding algorithm is performed, but not for the full image. Instead, the encoding algorithm is performed only for the ROI. Since the size of the ROI is bounded by the size and resolution of the viewing device at the client and not by the size of the image, only a small portion of the full progressive coding computation is performed for a local area of the original image. This local property is also true for the client. The client computer performs decoding and rendering only for ROI and not the full image. This real time streaming or Pixels-On-Demand™ architecture requires different approaches even to old ideas. For example, similarly to some prior art, the present imaging system is based on wavelets. But while in other systems wavelet bases are selected according to their coding abilities, the choice of wavelet bases in the present imaging system depends more on their ability to perform well in the real time framework. The system of the present invention supports several modes of progressive transmission: by resolution, by accuracy and by spatial order.
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Dekel Shai
Ovsiankin Alexander
Meky Moustafa M.
Needle & Rosenberg P.C.
RTImage Ltd.
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