A unifying framework for lossless and progressive image coding

Progressive coding is a desirable feature for image database telebrowsing or image transmissions over low bandwidth channels. Furthermore, for some applications, exact image reconstruction is required. In this paper, we show that most of the lossless and progressive coders can be described by a common nonlinear subband decomposition scheme. This unifying framework provides useful guidelines for the analysis and improvement of the considered decomposition methods. Finally, we compare the respective performances of these methods in terms of Shannon entropy for several images and also evaluate their compression ability when combined with a hierarchical coding technique. (C) 2001 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.