Gradation approximation for vector based compression of comic images

In this paper, we propose a method to vectorize comic images including halftone dots. Our method can prevent the jaggy and moire phenomena when the images are enlarged and shrank. The method contains three modules: halftone dots separation, gradation approximation, and vectorization. At the first module, small isolated areas and altered areas by dilation and erosion operations are separated into halftone dots images. At the second module, areas of halftone are approximated by contours and gradation parameters. At the last module, both halftone areas and line drawings are vectorized and approximated by smooth contours. The size of compressed file produced by our method is equal or smaller than JBIG compression. Validity of the proposed method is confirmed by experimental results.