For use in {HEAD ~ a system} for encoding and then decoding {TAIL ~ an image}, a method for decoding the image which was encoded by: subsampling the image to obtain a plural number of subsampled frames of spatially offset image representative signals; transforming each of said subsampled frames to obtain a corresponding number of frames of transform coefficient representative signals; forming vector representative signals from corresponding coefficient representative signals of the respective frames of coefficient representative signals; and vector quantizing the vector representative signals to obtain encoded signals; the decoding comprising the steps of: 
For use in { HEAD ~ a system } for encoding and then decoding { TAIL ~ an image } , a method for decoding the image which was encoded by : subsampling the image to obtain a plural number of subsampled frames of spatially offset image representative signals ; transforming each of said subsampled frames to obtain a corresponding number of frames of transform coefficient representative signals ; forming vector representative signals from corresponding coefficient representative signals of the respective frames of coefficient representative signals ; and vector quantizing the vector representative signals to obtain encoded signals ; the decoding comprising the steps of :
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