JPEG2000 low complexity allocation method of quality layers

An important issue of JPEG2000 implementations is the allocation of quality layers, since it determines the optimality of the code-stream in terms of rate-distortion. Common strategies of quality layers allocation use both rate-distortion optimization and rate allocation methods, requiring the user to specify the number of quality layers and a distribution function for their rate allocation. This paper presents a new allocation method of quality layers that, neither needing rate-distortion optimization nor requiring user specifications, constructs a near-optimal code-stream in terms of rate-distortion. Besides, the computational cost of the proposed method is in practice negligible, and its application helps to reduce the computational load of the JPEG2000 encoder.