Variance‐based color image quantization for frame buffer display

Color image quantization is a process of representing an image with a small number of well selected colors. In this article an algorithm for multidimensional data clustering (termed the variance‐based algorithm), based on the criterion of minimization of the sum‐of‐squared error, is applied to the problem of reducing the number of colors used to represent a given color image. The suitability of the sum‐of‐squared error criterion for measuring the similarity between the original and quantized images is examined using a digitized image and a computer‐generated image. The experimental results indicate that this error measure is basically consistent with the perceived quality of the quantized image. The performance of the variance‐based algorithm is compared with that of other algorithms for color image quantization in terms of quantization images generated using the colors selected by the variance‐based and the mediancut algorithms are also presented.