Method of reversible compression of low-order bits in digital images that
uses image palette as a look up table for high versus low order bit
fragments and replaces actual low-order bit fragments in the image by
relative sequential indexes that identify the position of correspondent
low-order bit fragment in palette array. Said relative sequential indexes
are smaller than low-order bit fragments because they are introduced and
incremented within the same high-order bit expression in palette array
and have significantly different statistical distribution properties
compared to distribution of original low-order bit fragments. For
successful reconstruction of said low-order bit fragments from said
relative sequential indexes the critical part of palette array is saved
in compressed data. In spite of additional data buffer the method
significantly improves compression ratio and has dual effect: first is
compression of low-order bits and second is possibility to ignore then
low-order bits in data modeling.