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Holiday on 14.05. and Inverted Classroom

Written on 06.05.26 by Pascal Peter

Dear students,

due to the holiday on 14.05., there will be no IC lecture in the corresponding slot.

To compensate for that, we will switch to inverted classroom for the coming week as an experiment. This means:

Please watch the video for Unit 05 before attending our regular Monday meeting… Read more

Please watch the video for Unit 05 before attending our regular Monday meeting (same time, same place as always).
In the Monday meeting, I will give a short slide walkthrough, but only as a reminder, not as a full lecture.
We will have pariticify questions during that session.
The full remainder of the time is your opportunity to ask *any questions* you might have about Unit 05 or any other lecture content.

For the past five iterations of IC, this has been the standard lecture mode. This is a good opportunity to see how you like this alternative lecture mode compared to the more traditional lecture style.

Since we will have a similar situation three times this semester, I will give you the opportunity to vote on several different solutions after the format switch.

Office Hour Announcement

Written on 02.05.26 by Mona Schappert

Hi everyone,

this is to let you know that starting next Monday, May 4th, I will be offering a weekly in-person office hour. (=

The office hour will take place in building E2 5, Seminar Room 3/U.11, on every Monday from 14:00 to 15:00.

Best,

Mona

Welcome to the Lecture

Written on 07.04.26 by Pascal Peter

Dear students,

the lecture kicks off on Thursday, 09.04., 16:15 with the introductory session, which is dedicated to an overview, the learning goals, and organisational issues.
Note that the lecture hall has changed to Lecture Hall 001 in E1.3 for all meetings throughout the whole semester.

In the second week of the semester we start with Unit 01. All of the lecture materials except for the assignments are already available for download on the CMS.

I look forward to meeting you and hope we will have a productive semester together.

Image Compression

Description

Motivation: High resolution image data is becoming increasingly popular in research and commercial applications (e.g. entertainment, medical imaging). In addition, there is also a high demand for content distribution via the internet. Due to the resulting increase in storage and bandwith requirements, image compression is a highly relevant and very active area of research.

Teaching Goals: The course is designed as a supplement for image processing lectures, to be attended before, after or parallel to them. After the lecture, participants should understand the theoretical foundations of image compression and be familiar with a wide range of classical and contemporary compression methods.

Contents: The lecture spans the whole evolution of image compression from the dawn of information theory to recent machine-learning approaches. It is seperated into two parts:

The first half of the lecture deals with lossless image compression. We discuss the information theoretic background of so-called entropy coders (e.g. Huffman-coding, arithmetic coding, ...), talk about dictionary methods (e.g. LZW), and cover state-of-the-art approaches like PPM and PAQ. These tools are not limited to compressing image data, but also form core parts of general data compression software such as BZIP2. Knowledge about entropy coding and prediction is key for understanding the classic and contemporary lossless codecs like PNG, gif or JBIG.

The second part of the lecture is dedicated to lossy image compression techniques. We deal with classic transformation based compression (JPEG, JPEG2000), but also with emerging approaches like inpainting-based, fractal, or neural network compression. Furthermore, we consider related topics like human perception, and error measures.

Entrance Requirements

Basic mathematics courses (such as Mathematik für Informatiker I-III) are recommended. Understanding English is necessary. Image processing lectures such as "Image Processing and Computer Vision" are helpful for some specific topics, but not necessary. For the programming assignments, some elementary programming skills are required.

Assessments / Exams

There will be two written exams with a limited open book format.

Exam dates:
21.07.2026 9-12, E1.3 Lecture Hall 002
29.09.2026 9-12, E1.3 Lecture Hall 002
The actual exam takes 2 hours.
We are aware that not everyone likes early time slot, but due to the unavailability of GHH, exam scheduling is more problematic in this semster.

Detailed rules for our exams are published in the self test assignment which also provides an impression of the structure and assignment types to be expected from the real exams.

You can participate in both exams, and the better grades counts. Please remember that you have to register online for the exam in the LSF system of Saarland University.

Lecture Format

Classical lecture with interactive elements and room for discussion. Lecture videos from previous semesters will be uploaded as well.

Weekly meetings:
Monday 12:15-14 and Thursday 16:15-18 in E1.3, Lecture Hall 001.
First meeting: Thursday, 09.04.

Lecture Materials / Assignments

All slides, videos, assignments, example solutions, and an exam formulary are offered for download in the CMS.

References

There is no specific book that covers the complete content of this class. However, each of the following books covers several of the topics discussed in the lecture:

T. Strutz: Bilddatenkompression. Vieweg+Teubner (in German)

D. Hankerson, G. A. Harris, and P. D. Johnson, Jr.: Introduction to Information Theory and Data Compression. Chapman & Hall/CRC

K. Sayood: Introduction to Data Compression. Morgan Kaufmann

Further references will be given during the lecture.