TobepublishedinProceedingsofspieVol.4115.Seehttp://itSwww.epfl.ch/-dsanta/forthefinalreference JPEG 2000 still image coding versus other standards D Santa-Cruz, TEbrahimi,.Askelof, M Larsson and C. A Christopoulos Signal Processing Laboratory - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology CH-1015 Lausanne Switzerland E-mail:( Diego. Santa Cruz, Touradj Ebrahimi)@epfl. ch Ericsson Research, Corporate Unit S-164 Stockholm. Sweden E-mail: JJoel Askelof, Mathias. Larsson, Charilaos Christopoulos ) @era. ericssonse ABSTRACT JPEG 2000, the new IsonTU-T standard for still image coding, is about to be finished. Other new standards have been recently introduced, namely JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC. This paper compares the set of features offered by JPEG 2000 and how well they are fulfilled, versus JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC, as well as the older but widely used JPEG and more recent PNG. The study concentrates 2 s.ession efficiency and functionality set, while addressing other aspects such as omplexity. Lossless compression efficiency as well as the fixed and progressive lossy rate-distortion behaviors are valuated. Robustness to transmission errors, Region of Interest coding and complexity are also discussed. The principles ehind each algorithm are briefly described. The results show that the choice of the"best standard depends strongly on the application at hand, but that JPEG 2000 supports the widest set of features among the evaluated standards, while providing superior rate-distortion performance in most cases Keywords: image coding, standards, wavelets, DWT, DCT, JPEG, JPEG-LS, JPEG 2000, MPEG-4, PNG 1. INTRODUCTION It has been three years since the call for proposals for the next ISO/ITU-T standard for compression of still images, JPEG 2000, has been issued. Now JPEG 2000 Part I(the core system)is in its final stage to become an International Standard (Is). It has been promoted to Final Committee Draft(FCD) in March 2000 and will reach IS status by the end of the same year. A great effort has been made to deliver a new standard for today's and tomorrows applications, by providing features inexistent in previous standards, but also by providing higher efficiency for features that exist in others. Now that the new standard is nearing finalization, a trivial question would be: what are the features offered by JPEG 2000 but also how well are they fulfilled when compared to other standards offering the same features. This paper aims at providing an nswer to this simple but somewhat complex question. Section 2 provides a brief overview of the techniques compared with special attention on new features of JPEG 2000 such as Region of Interest(ROD) coding. Section 3 explains the comparison methodology employed in the results shown in section 4 and conclusions are drawn in section 5 2. OVERVIEW OF STILL IMAGE CODING STANDARDS For the purpose of this study we compare the coding algorithm in JPEG 2000 standard to the following three standards JPEG, MPEG-4 Visual Texture Coding(VTC)* and JPEG-LS. In addition, we also include PNG. The reasons behind this hoice are as follows. JPEG is one of the most popular coding techniques in imaging applications ranging from Internet to digital photography. Both MPEG-4 VTC and JPEG-LS are very recent standards that start appearing in various applications It is only logical to compare the set of features offered by JPEG 2000 standard not only to those offered in a popular but lder standard ( PEg), but also to those offered in most recent ones using newer state-of-the-art technologies. Although PNG is not formally a standard and is not based on state-of-the-art techniques, it is becoming increasingly popular for Internet based applications. PNG is also undergoing standardization by ISO/EC JTC1/SC24 and will eventually become ISO/EC international standard 15948To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4115. See http://ltswww.epfl.ch/~dsanta/ for the final reference. 1 JPEG 2000 still image coding versus other standards D. Santa-Cruza , T. Ebrahimia , J. Askelöfb , M. Larssonb and C. A. Christopoulosb a Signal Processing Laboratory – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland E-mail: {Diego.SantaCruz, Touradj.Ebrahimi}@epfl.ch b Ericsson Research, Corporate Unit S-164 Stockholm, Sweden E-mail: {Joel.Askelof, Mathias.Larsson, Charilaos.Christopoulos }@era.ericsson.se ABSTRACT JPEG 2000, the new ISO/ITU-T standard for still image coding, is about to be finished. Other new standards have been recently introduced, namely JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC. This paper compares the set of features offered by JPEG 2000, and how well they are fulfilled, versus JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC, as well as the older but widely used JPEG and more recent PNG. The study concentrates on compression efficiency and functionality set, while addressing other aspects such as complexity. Lossless compression efficiency as well as the fixed and progressive lossy rate-distortion behaviors are evaluated. Robustness to transmission errors, Region of Interest coding and complexity are also discussed. The principles behind each algorithm are briefly described. The results show that the choice of the “best” standard depends strongly on the application at hand, but that JPEG 2000 supports the widest set of features among the evaluated standards, while providing superior rate-distortion performance in most cases. Keywords: image coding, standards, wavelets, DWT, DCT, JPEG, JPEG-LS, JPEG 2000, MPEG-4, PNG 1. INTRODUCTION It has been three years since the call for proposals1 for the next ISO/ITU-T standard for compression of still images, JPEG 2000, has been issued. Now JPEG 2000 Part I (the core system) is in its final stage to become an International Standard (IS). It has been promoted to Final Committee Draft (FCD)2 in March 2000 and will reach IS status by the end of the same year. A great effort has been made to deliver a new standard for today's and tomorrow's applications, by providing features inexistent in previous standards, but also by providing higher efficiency for features that exist in others. Now that the new standard is nearing finalization, a trivial question would be: what are the features offered by JPEG 2000 but also how well are they fulfilled when compared to other standards offering the same features. This paper aims at providing an answer to this simple but somewhat complex question. Section 2 provides a brief overview of the techniques compared, with special attention on new features of JPEG 2000 such as Region of Interest (ROI) coding. Section 3 explains the comparison methodology employed in the results shown in section 4 and conclusions are drawn in section 5. 2. OVERVIEW OF STILL IMAGE CODING STANDARDS For the purpose of this study we compare the coding algorithm in JPEG 2000 standard to the following three standards: JPEG3 , MPEG-4 Visual Texture Coding (VTC)4 and JPEG-LS5 . In addition, we also include PNG6 . The reasons behind this choice are as follows. JPEG is one of the most popular coding techniques in imaging applications ranging from Internet to digital photography. Both MPEG-4 VTC and JPEG-LS are very recent standards that start appearing in various applications. It is only logical to compare the set of features offered by JPEG 2000 standard not only to those offered in a popular but older standard (JPEG), but also to those offered in most recent ones using newer state-of-the-art technologies. Although PNG is not formally a standard and is not based on state-of-the-art techniques, it is becoming increasingly popular for Internet based applications. PNG is also undergoing standardization by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24 and will eventually become ISO/IEC international standard 15948