IMAGE COMPRESSION DEVICE AND IMAGE COMPRESSION METHOD FOR COMPRESSING IMAGES BY SMOOTHING THEM, REVERSIBLY COMPRESSING THE RESIDUAL IMAGES AND COMPRESSING THE SMOOTHED IMAGES BASED ON FRACTAL THEORY

An image compression device comprises an image smoothing device which produces a smooth image by performing a smoothing process on an original image, an edge detection device which produces an edge image by subtracting said smoothed image from said original image, a fractal encoding device which encodes said smoothed image by fractal image compression, a reversible encoding device which encodes said edge image by reversible image compression, and an output device which combines the output of said fractal encoding means and the output of said reversible encoding means, and outputs said data as compressed data of the original image.