  In this paper we explore tradeoffs, regarding coding performance, between the
thickness and spacing of the cutset used in Reduced Cutset Coding (RCC) of a
Markov random field image model. Considering MRF models on a square lattice of
sites, we show that under a stationarity condition, increasing the thickness of
the cutset reduces coding rate for the cutset, increasing the spacing between
components of the cutset increases the coding rate of the non-cutset pixels,
though the coding rate of the latter is always strictly less than that of the
former. We show that the redundancy of RCC can be decomposed into two terms, a
correlation redundancy due to coding the components of the cutset
independently, and a distribution redundancy due to coding the cutset as a
reduced MRF. We provide analysis of these two sources of redundancy. We present
results from numerical simulations with a homogeneous Ising model that bear out
the analytical results. We also present a consistent estimation algorithm for
the moment-matching reduced MRF on the cutset.
