An error resilient coding technique for JPEG2000

We introduce a mixed fixed-length coding (FLC) and variable-length coding (VLC) technique to improve the error resilience of the upcoming JPEG2000 image coding standard. Our proposed method operates on quantized subband coefficients, and produces a bit-stream with both FLC and VLC codewords. Higher error resilience is achieved by eliminating the error propagation within FLC sections, which in general comprise the majority of the coded bit-stream. A highly efficient coding technique has been developed to generate fixed-length codewords for groups of quantization indices, and significantly reduce the amount of information to be entropy coded. However, the noiseless compression performance is not compromised. Every effect has been made to minimize the impact of our modifications to the baseline coding structure and the bit-stream syntax defined in the standard, so the proposed technique can be easily integrated into any JPEG2000 compliant system