IMAGE DATA COMPRESSION EMPLOYING OPTIMAL SUBREGION COMPRESSION

An image data compression technique includes division of an image data stream into a plurality of subregions and optimal compression of each subregion. The subregions may represent adjacent pixels in a reconstructed image, and may all be of the same length. The length of the subregions may be set to a default, and may be altered based upon image characteristics. The subregions are analyzed for selection of an optimal compression algorithm for each subregion from a set of candidate algorithms. Criteria for selection of the optimal algorithms may include the relative entropy levels of data within the subregions, and the length of compressed data code resulting from application of each of the candidate algorithms.