Perceptual coding of digital monochrome images

A novel perceptual image coder of gray level images is presented. This coder adopts the EBCOT coding structure employed in the JPEG2000 image coding standard , coupled with an advanced vision model based perceptual distortion measure for rate-distortion optimization to produce coded images with improved visual quality. The proposed coder maintains the EBCOT coding features such as scalability and is fully bitstream compliant with the JPEG2000 standard. Results of subjective evaluations, using comparative forced-choice subjective tests, demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed perceptual coder over the the EBCOT/JPEG2000 benchmark coders.