| Revolutionary Image Compression Cuts Storage Costs Nearly 80% |
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New York, New York -- November 1, 1997 -- JSTOR announced that it has adopted the Cartesian Perceptual Compression (CPC) format for storage of JSTOR's multi-million page electronic archive of scholarly literature. Foreshadowing a future in which digital libraries provide direct access to their holdings via the Internet, JSTOR provides Internet users access to complete backruns of many prominent academic journals, such as The American Economic Review, The Journal of American History, and Annals of Mathematics. Use of the revolutionary CPC compression format is reaping significant economic advantages for JSTOR. "We had been storing all of our images exclusively in TIFF format," explained Kevin Guthrie, President of JSTOR, "early this year, we had saturated existing disk capacity and were facing an outlay of over $100,000 for additional disk storage to accommodate growth in the database." Instead of purchasing more disks, JSTOR converted the TIFF images to CPC format -- a novel next-generation image compression format developed by Cartesian Products. This change immediately reduced JSTOR's disk storage requirements from 190 gigabytes to 42 gigabytes -- a reduction of almost 5 to 1. "We have seen many instances in which CPC reduced file sizes by well over 95%." said Ira Fuchs, Chief Scientist of JSTOR. "This dramatic reduction in file size could enable an entirely new breed of imaging applications, due to the commensurate reductions in transmission costs, download times, and publication costs. We are pleased to be one of the leaders in establishing this exciting technology." By using adaptive perceptual filters based on the dynamics of the human visual system, the CPC algorithm is able to reduce images to as much as 1/30th the size of the corresponding TIFF files -- with no loss in image fidelity. In fact, in blind tests of subjective image quality run by the International Standards Organization (ISO), subjects actually preferred CPC compressed images over the original images. "JSTOR has benefitted greatly from its relationship with Cartesian Products, Inc." said Guthrie. "The CPC format reduced the data storage requirements for our page images with no loss in image quality. This efficiency not only saves JSTOR money, but it also improves JSTOR's performance for users by allowing us to consider the addition of mirror sites that previously would have been prohibitively expensive. Frankly, we are amazed by the effectiveness of CPC." Combined with Cartesian's CPC View Internet Browser plug-in, CPC technology is expected to enable a multitude of new network-based imaging applications. Cartesian is working with a number of vendors who will be releasing CPC-enabled products in early 1998, encompassing a broad range of applications including Internet fax services, document distribution, educational assistance, and electronic libraries. Cartesian Products, Inc. is a high-technology research and development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was founded in September 1991 to provide advanced software technology to improve worldwide communication and information access. Cartesian Products has been granted a United States patent on its technology and has applied for patent protection abroad. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It is dedicated to helping the scholarly community take advantage of advances in information technologies. JSTOR's database of the complete backfiles of core scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences is nearing 2 million pages, and is available via site licenses at approximately 250 academic institutions in the United States and Canada. |
Cartesian Perceptual Compression and CPC View are trademarks of Cartesian Products, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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