Fast variable run-length coding for embedded progressive wavelet-based image compression

  • Authors:
  • W. Berghorn;T. Boskamp;M. Lang;H. -O. Peitgen

  • Affiliations:
  • Center for Med. Diagnostic Syst. & Visualization, Bremen;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Image Processing
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Run-length coding has attracted much attention in wavelet-based image compression because of its simplicity and potentially low complexity. The main drawback is the inferior RD-performance compared to the state-of-the-art-coder SPIHT. In this paper, we concentrate on the embedded progressive run-length code of Tian and Wells (1996, 1998). We consider significance sequences drawn from the scan in the dominant pass. It turns out that self-similar curves for scanning the dominant pass increase the compression efficiency significantly. This is a consequence of the correlation of direct neighbors in the wavelet domain. This dependence can be better exploited by using groups of coefficients, similar to the SPIHT algorithm. This results in a new and very fast coding algorithm, which shows performance similar to the state-of-the-art coder SPIHT, but with lower complexity and small and fixed memory overhead