High-fidelity image compression with multithreshold wavelet coding (MTWC)
Houng-Jyh M. Wang, C.‐C. Jay Kuo · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1997
A new embedded wavelet coder called the multi-threshold wavelet coder (MTWC) was proposed in this research. The new coder was motivated by a careful analysis of the rate- distortion performance and the coding efficiency of existing embedded wavelet coders. Unlike other proposed embedded wavelet coders which use a single initial threshold in their successive approximate quantization, MTWC uses different initial thresholds in different subbands and applies a subband decision scheme to decide which subband should be coded in sequence. It is shown with experimental results that MTWC has a better rate-distortion tradeoff at higher bit rates and a lower computational complexity than other embedded wavelet coders. Furthermore, MTWC can be easily applied to an image coder with the wavelet packet transform, whose performance is significantly better than their age coder with the pyramid wavelet transform for texture-dominant imagery.