An embedded wavelet hierarchical image coder

A simple, yet remarkably effective, image compression algorithm that has the property that the bits in the bit stream are generated in order of importance, yielding fully hierarchical image compression suitable for embedded coding or progressive transmission, is described. Given an image bit stream, the decoder can cease decoding at the same image that would have been encoded at the bit rate corresponding to the truncated bit stream. The compression algorithm is based on three key concepts: (1) wavelet transform or hierarchical subband decomposition, (2) prediction of the absence of significant information across scales by exploiting the self-similarity inherent in images, and (3) hierarchical entropy-coded quantization