Enhancement of images compression using channel attention and post-filtering based on deep autoencoder

Image compression is a crucial research topic in today's information age, especially to meet the demand for balanced data compression efficiency with the quality of the resulting image reconstruction. Common methods used for image compression nowadays are based on autoencoders with deep learning foundations. However, these methods have limitations as they only consider residual values in processed images to achieve existing compression efficiency with less satisfying reconstruction results. To address this issue, we introduce the Attention Block mechanism to improve coding efficiency even further. Additionally, we introduce post-filtering methods to enhance the final reconstruction results of images. Experimental results using two datasets, CLIC for training and KODAK for testing, demonstrate that this method outperforms several previous research methods. With an efficiency coding improvement of -28.16%, an average PSNR improvement of 34%, and an MS-SSIM improvement of 8%, the model in this study significantly enhances the rate-distortion (RD) performance compared to previous approaches.