Approximation Quality Improvement Techniques in Progressive Image Transmission

Progressive transmission of images has proved to be an efficient way of reaching effective bit rate reductions in highly interactive contexts such as telebrowsing systems, or low bandwidth communication channels. However, the lack of quality of the intermediate approximations has so far limited the obtained effective compression to a small factor. Three different and compatible techniques are presented to improve this quality: use of smoother interpolation schemes in its generation, a nonuniform decomposition procedure to favor the early refinement of relevant areas of the image, and an extension of the transmission hierarchy to pixel quantization producing successive refinement of the grey level resolution of the approximations. Combined use of these approaches yields effective bit rate reductions of up to 12.5:1, considerably extending the range and power of progressive transmission methods.