A fast, degradation-free solution for the DCT block extraction problem is proposed. The problem is defined as extracting a DCT block from a DCT compressed frame composed of DCT blocks. This problem is encountered in both video/image manipulations in the compressed domain and transcodecs, for example, converting from MPEG to Motion JPEG. Traditionally, solutions involve using the pixel domain manipulation or Chang's (1992) algorithm with approximations. The new solution expands Chang's algorithms, takes full advantage of a fast DCT algorithm, and exploits characteristics of the input DCT blocks without any approximation. The new DCT block extraction achieves 70% performance improvement without any degradation of image quality compared with the conventional solutions.

A generalized boundary condition for self-interstitial diffusion in silicon is proposed by assuming interstitial flux continuity across the interface. In the case of thermal oxidation, the majority of generated interstitials at the interface flows into the oxide, while only a small fraction of the interstitials diffuse into bulk silicon causing oxidation-induced anomalous diffusion of dopants. The boundary condition together with a point-defect-based diffusion model, predicts several oxidation-related phenomena which cannot be explained without the quite sophisticated models reported to date. Those anomalous phenomena are oxidation-retarded diffusion of boron and phosphorus at high temperature, stripe-width independence of oxidation-enhanced diffusion of P and B, and oxidation-enhanced diffusion and oxidation-retarded diffusion of phosphorus during HCl oxidation. The generalized boundary condition is also shown to be applicable to thermal nitridation, in which interstitial generation, at the interface is neglected. Using the boundary condition, stripe-width dependence of nitridation-enhanced diffusion of antimony is demonstrated.>