A framework for application specific image compression

Summary form only given. Images and video are being extensively used in numerous areas such as video-conferencing, multimedia documentation, telemedicine, high definition television (HDTV) etc. These diverse applications can benefit from the design of a family of image compression algorithms that address their specific needs. We propose a framework for wavelet-based image compression that leads to a family of image compression schemes, and facilitates a comparative study of the complexity, compression ratio, and other properties of this family. The embedded zerotree wavelet (EZW) and the web of wavelets (WW) methods fall into this family