Knowledge Distillation for Learned Image Compression

Recently, learned image compression (LIC) models have achieved remarkable rate-distortion (RD) performance, yet their high computational complexity severely limits practical deployment. To overcome this challenge, we propose a novel Stage-wise Modular Distillation framework, SMoDi, which efficiently compresses LIC models while preserving RD performance. This framework treats each stage of LIC models as an independent sub-task, mirroring the teacher model's task decomposition to the student, thereby simplifying knowledge transfer. We identify two crucial factors determining the effectiveness of knowledge distillation: student model construction and loss function design. Specifically, we first propose Teacher-Guided Student Model Construction, a pruning-like method ensuring architectural consistency between teacher and student models. Next, we introduce Implicit End-to-end Supervision, facilitating adaptive energy compaction and bitrate regularization. Based on these insights, we develop KDIC, a lightweight student model derived from the state-of-the-art S2CFormer model. Experimental results demonstrate that KDIC achieves top-tier RD performance with significantly reduced computational complexity. To our knowledge, this work is among the first successful applications of knowledge distillation to learned image compression.