How does image compression obtained with foveated imaging compare to more conventional forms of compression such as JPEG or MPEG?
Foveated imaging does not compete with other forms of compression but layers on top of them. Our foveated imaging software is completely compatible with virtually all other forms of image compression. Recall that the output of the foveation encoder is a small collection of images (or a single combined image), where the total number of pixels is a small faction of those in the original image. These output images can be passed onto any other image encoder/decoder. For MPEG/H.263 (and our own custom video compression software) we have demonstrated that foveation often increases the compression by a multiplicative factor. For example, if the foveated imaging produces a compression factor of 3 and MPEG produces a compression factor of 100 then putting the two together produces a compression factor of approximately 300.
