Multistage quantization via conditional hierarchical mapping

Progressive representation can be realized via a set of quantizers, where the quantizers correspond to an increasing level of refinement. This is referred to as multistage quantization. The work presented in the paper provides an extension to embedded multistage scalar quantization. It allows progressive coding with any set of scalar quantizers, where the partitions are not necessarily embedded, using an efficient, novel multi-layer mapping scheme. It is applicable for progressive coding of raw image and video data and for progressive extension to compression schemes like JPEG and MPEG.