Wavelet packets-based image coding using joint space-frequency quantization
A novel quantization scheme targeted at jointly optimizing the spatial and frequency characterization of the wavelet representation of images was introduced in Xiong et al. (1993) for image compression applications. The present authors extend the concept of joint space-frequency quantization (SFQ) to the more flexible class of wavelet packet representations (Coifman and Wickerhauser, 1992), which are a generalization of the multiresolution decomposition using the wavelet transform. They propose a fast algorithm to jointly search for the best wavelet packet basis and space-frequency quantizer, presenting empirical evidence of its high performance (e.g., for the "Barbara" image coded at 0.5 b/p, they get a 0.7 dB gain in PSNR over the fixed-wavelet based SFQ of Xiong et al. and 1.5 dB over Shapiro's embedded wavelet coder (Shapiro, 1993)).<<ETX>>