Wavelet‐based lossless compression scheme with progressive transmission capability

Lossless image compression with progressive transmission capabilities plays a key role in measurement applications, requiring quantitative analysis and involving large sets of images. This work proposes a wavelet‐based compression scheme that is able to operate in the lossless mode. The quantization module implements a new technique for the coding of the wavelet coefficients that is more effective than the classical zerotree coding. The experimental results obtained on a set of multimodal medical images show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the embedded zerotree coder combined with the integer wavelet transform by 0.28 bpp, the set‐partitioning coder by 0.1 bpp, and the lossless JPEG coder by 0.6 bpp. The scheme produces a losslessly compressed embedded data stream; hence, it supports progressive refinement of the decompressed images. Therefore, it is a good candidate for telematics applications requiring fast user interaction with the image data, retaining the option of lossless transmission and archiving of the images. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol 10: 76–85, 1999