JBIG2-the ultimate bi-level image coding standard

JBIG2 is a new standard for lossy and lossless compression of bi-level images. It exploits model-based coding for text and halftones; as well as nearby neighbor based coding for generic bi-level images. It can achieve compression ratios of up to three times those of existing standards for lossless textual image compression. JBIG2 also allows loss to be introduced while maintaining “visually lossless” quality for textual images, for which it can yield compression ratios of up to eight times those of existing standards. It produces even greater compression ratios when exploiting similarities between multiple pages and efficiently codes and integrates both scanned and generated bi-level images. JBIG2 was developed for applications having widely differing requirements such as facsimile, document storage and archiving, Web image coding, wireless data transmission, print spooling, and even teleconferencing. Accordingly, JBIG2 is structured as a “toolkit” of alternate capabilities to be selected based on the requirements of such applications