Using SVD to compress an image in MATLAB

Question

I am brand new to MATLAB but am trying to do some image compression code for grayscale images.

Questions

How can I use SVD to trim off low-v

Answer 1

For example, here's a 512 x 512 B&W image of Lena:

We compute the SVD of Lena. Choosing the singular values above 1% of the maximum singular value, we are left with just 53 singular values. Reconstructing Lena with these singular values and the corresponding (left and right) singular vectors, we obtain a low-rank approximation of Lena:

Instead of storing 512 * 512 = 262144 values (each taking 8 bits), we can store 2 x (512 x 53) + 53 = 54325 values, which is approximately 20% of the original size. This is one example of how SVD can be used to do lossy image compression.

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Here's the MATLAB code:

% open Lena image and convert from uint8 to double
Lena = double(imread('LenaBW.bmp'));

% perform SVD on Lena
[U,S,V] = svd(Lena);

% extract singular values
singvals = diag(S);

% find out where to truncate the U, S, V matrices
indices = find(singvals >= 0.01 * singvals(1));

% reduce SVD matrices
U_red = U(:,indices);
S_red = S(indices,indices);
V_red = V(:,indices);

% construct low-rank approximation of Lena
Lena_red = U_red * S_red * V_red';

% print results to command window
r = num2str(length(indices));
m = num2str(length(singvals));
disp(['Low-rank approximation used ',r,' of ',m,' singular values']);

% save reduced Lena
imwrite(uint8(Lena_red),'Reduced Lena.bmp');