Provided are intelligent water ring scan apparatus and method thereof, image encoding/decoding apparatus using the water ring scanning and method thereof, and a computer-readable recording medium for recording a program that implements the methods. The apparatus or method of this research selectively improves the image quality of a particular image part that needs to be encoded with priority by transmitting the image data of the particular image part suitably for a human visual system so as to provide a visually improved image. The encoding apparatus of this research differentiates the amount of image data depending on the significance of a certain image part to process the image in various qualities suitably for the human visual system. The methods of this research can be applied to an image encoding/decoding process.