Multiple description coding for protecting regions of interest in images

A new multiple description (MD) coding for protecting regions of interest (ROI) in images is proposed by combining the advantages of MD coding and ROI coding. The set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) algorithm is used to generate MD streams, and these streams are divided into ROI streams and background (BG) streams. For protection of ROI, our method assigns different redundant trees to the two kinds streams, the fully coded trees are assigned as the redundant trees of the ROI streams, the partially coded trees are assigned as the redundant trees of the BG streams. Experiment results show that our method can further increase the reconstruction quality of the ROI over noisy channels compared with other regions of interest multiple description coding methods.