An optimised feature may finite-state vector quantisation (referred to as o
ptimised FMFSVQ) is presented for image coding. Based on the block-based gr
adient descent search algorithm used for motion estimation in video coding,
the optimised FMFSVQ system finds a neighbourhood-based optimal codevector
for each input vector by extending the associated state codebook stage by
stage, thus rendering each slate quantiser a variable rate vector quantisat
ion. The optimised FMFSVQ system can be interpreted as a cascade of a finit
e-state vector quantiser and classified vector quantisers. Furthermore, an
adaptive optimised FMFSVQ is obtained. Experiments demonstrate the superior
rate-distortion performance of the adaptive optimised FMFSVQ compared with
the original adaptive FMFSVQ and the memoryless vector quantisation.