Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization

Image coding is one of the most visable applications of wavelets. There has been increasing number of reports each year since the late 1980's on the design of new wavelet coders and variations to existing ones. In this paper, we report some results from our comparative study of wavelet image coders using a perception-based, quantitative picture quality scale as the distortion measure. Coders are evaluated in rate-distortion sense; the influences of different wavelets, quantizers, and encoders are assessed individually. Our results provide an insight into the design issues of optimizing wavelets coders, as well as a good reference for application decelopers to choose from an increasingly large family of wavelet coders for their applications.