This book presents the main concepts in handling digital images of mixed content, traditionally referenced as mixed raster content (MRC), in two main parts. The first includes introductory chapters covering the scientific and technical background aspects, whereas the second presents a set of research and development approaches to tackle key issues in MRC segmentation, compression and transmission.

The book starts with a review of color theory and the mechanism of color vision in humans. In turn, the second chapter reviews data coding and compression methods so as to set the background and demonstrate the complexity involved in dealing with MRC. Chapter three addresses the segmentation of images through an extensive literature review, which highlights the various approaches used to tackle MRC segmentation.

The second part of the book focuses on the segmentation of color images for optimized compression, including multi-layered decomposition and representation of MRCand the processes that can be employed to optimize the coding rates of those different layers. Rounding out the coverage, the final chapter examines the segmentation of color images for optimized transmission.