In particular, a DCT is a Fourier-related transform similar to the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), but using only real numbers. The use of cosine rather than sine functions is critical for compression, since it turns out (as described below) that fewer cosine functions are needed to approximate a typical signal, whereas for differential equations the cosines express a particular choice of boundary conditions. DCTs are also important to numerous other applications in science and engineering, such as digital signal processing, telecommunication devices, reducing network bandwidth usage, and spectral methods for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. It is used in most digital media, including digital images (such as JPEG and HEIF, where small high-frequency components can be discarded), digital video (such as MPEG and H.26x), digital audio (such as Dolby Digital, MP3 and AAC), digital television (such as SDTV, HDTV and VOD), digital radio (such as AAC+ and DAB+), and speech coding (such as AAC-LD, Siren and Opus). The DCT, first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972, is a widely used transformation technique in signal processing and data compression. Technique representing data as sums of cosine functionsĪ discrete cosine transform ( DCT) expresses a finite sequence of data points in terms of a sum of cosine functions oscillating at different frequencies.