Wavelet Packets and Spatial Adaptive Intraband Coding of Images

In this work, we present a coding scheme based on a rate-distortion optimum wavelet packets decomposition and on an adaptive coding procedure that exploits spatial non-stationarity within each subband. We show, by means of a generalization of the concept of coding gain to the case of non-stationary signals, that it may be convenient to perform subband decomposition optimization in conjunction with intraband optimal bit allocation. In our implementation, each subband is partitioned into blocks of coefficients that are coded using a geometric vector quantizer with a rate determined on the basis of spatially local statistical characteristics. The proposed scheme appears to be simpler than other wavelet packets-based schemes presented in the literature and achieves good results in terms of both compression and visual quality. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.