Lossless Compression Algorithm for Droplet Images in Space Droplet Evaporation Experiment

In space droplet evaporation experiment, a great number of droplet images were captured, compressed and then transmitted to the ground station. To improve lossless image compression ratio in space droplet evaporation experiment, according to the high correlation between droplet images that were sequentially captured, an image sequence lossless compression algorithm based on JPEG-LS algorithm and interframe prediction error coding was developed. In this algorithm, JPEG-LS algorithm was applied to the first frame of the image sequence. Every single frame that follows was compared with its previous frame to get an interframe prediction error frame, and Golomb coding was applied to the interframe prediction error frame. In this way, lossless compression for droplet images sequence was realized. The result of experiments shows that the proposed algorithm is superior to JPEG-LS in compression ratio and encoding time.