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Fractal image compression is a highly unusual and mathematically sophisticated image compression technique that emerged primarily during the late 1980s and 1990s. Unlike conventional compression methods, which attempt to reduce the amount of image data by encoding pixels more efficiently, fractal compression tries to represent an image through a system of mathematical transformations that can recreate the image through an iterative process.

The idea is deeply connected to fractal geometry and the observation that many natural images contain repeated structures and patterns at different scales. Instead of storing every detail directly, fractal compression stores descriptions of how parts of the image resemble other parts of the same image.

It remains one of the most intellectually fascinating approaches in the history of image coding.