Efficient quadtree coding of images and video

The authors describe the theory needed to construct quadtree data structures which optimally allocate rate, given a set of quantizers. A Lagrange multiplier method finds these optimal rate allocations with no monotonicity restrictions. The theory is used to derive a new quadtree construction method which uses a stepwise search to find the overall optimal quadtree structure. The search can be driven with either actual measured quantizer performance or ensemble average predicted performance. This theory is then applied to the design of an interframe hybrid video coding system using a quadtree with vector quantization