Lossless progressive transmission of scientific data using biorthogonal wavelet transform

A new progressive transmission scheme using spline biorthogonal wavelet bases is proposed in this paper. First, several wavelet bases are compared with the spline biorthogonal wavelet bases. By exploiting the properties of this set of wavelet bases, a fast algorithm involving only additions and subtractions is developed. Due to the multiresolutional nature of the wavelet transform, this scheme is compatible with hierarchical-structured rendering algorithms. The formula for reconstructing the functional values in a continuous volume space is given in a simple polynomial form. Lossless compression is possible, even when using floating-point numbers. When the algorithm is applied to data from a global ocean model, the lossless compression ratio is about 1.5:1. Even with a compression ratio of 50:1, the reconstructed data is still of good quality. Finally, the reconstructed data is rendered using various visualization algorithms and the results are demonstrated