A two-layered wavelet-based algorithm for efficient lossless and lossy image compression

In this paper, we propose a wavelet-based image-coding scheme allowing lossless and lossy compression, simultaneously. Our two-layered approach utilizes the best of two worlds: it uses a highly performing wavelet-based or wavelet packet-based coding technique for lossy compression in the low bit range as a first stage. For the second (optional) stage, we extend the concept of reversible integer wavelet transforms to the more flexible class of adaptive reversible integer wavelet packet transforms which are based on the generation of a whole library of bases, from which the best representation for a given residue between the reconstructed lossy compressed image and the original image is chosen using a fast-search algorithm. We present experimental results demonstrating that our compression algorithm yields a rate-distortion performance similar or superior to the best currently published pure lossy still image-coding methods. At the same time, the lossless compression performance of our two-layered scheme is comparable to that of state-of-the-art pure lossless image-coding schemes. Compared to other combined lossy/lossless coding schemes such as the emerging JPEG-2000 still image-coding standard PSNR improvements up to 3 dB are achieved for a set of standard test images.