Coding of ocean-temperature volumes using binary set splitting with k-d trees

An embedded wavelet-based coder for the shape-adaptive coding of ocean-temperature data is described. The proposed coder, 3D binary set splitting with k-d trees (3D-BISK), is based upon the popular bitplane-coding paradigm and is specifically designed for shape-adaptive coding. Other similar coding methods use octree-based set partitioning; however, 3D-BISK employs a simpler set decomposition based on k-d trees which makes it more flexible when considering shape-adaptive coding. The performance of 3D-BISK is compared to prominent shape-adaptive coders and superior performance is demonstrated for a variety of ocean-temperature datasets.