AbstractPel Adaptive DPCM Coding is an encoding method in which an appropriate DPCM coding loop is selected for every picture element. This is done by referring to only the past decoded values in the previously available multiple coding loops. Since each DPCM loop has been determined experimentally, it has been difficult to achieve efficient encoding, and the location of its compression limit remains unclear. In this paper, we have modified the previously proposed Block Adaptive DPCM coding method based on image partition and introduced a Pel adaptive DPCM coding method using multiple DPCM coding loops. In this method, nonhierarchical cluster analysis plays an important role. The coding performances of a Pel adaptive DPCM coding method differ depending on the subject images. The Pel adaptive DPCM designed by the above method yields a maximum performance advantage of 2.9 dB for the Girl and Couple images, 1.5 dB for the Aerial image, and none for the Moon. This is an improvement over the optimally designed block adaptive DPCM coding method proposed previously by the authors.