The JPEG 2000 Image Compression Standard

Jim Reid
Xerox Corporation
JReid@crt.xerox.com

ABSTRACT

This talk will give an overview of the JPEG 2000 Image Compression Standard, including the optional file formats defined in the standard to enable JPEG 20000 applications. The talk will then focus on one of those file formats - JPM, the JPEG 2000-defined file format for compound images.

JPEG 2000 is a wavelet-based image compression standard, developed by the JPEG committee (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29/WG1). It was intended as a next generation follow-on to the JPEG standard. The core JPEG 2000 algorithm was completed in 2000 and is defined in Part 1 of the standard, which has been issued as ISO 15444-1.

The widespread use of JPEG for continuous image compression for digital cameras and images on web pages meant that a new compression algorithm needed to offer new features and capabilities-better compression performance by itself might not be sufficient to attract applications. As the next generation compression system, JPEG 2000 was developed with several criteria in mind to differentiate it from JPEG and to support new value propositions:

While there is little difference in perceived image quality between JPEG and JPEG 2000 when compressing 24-bit color images at 20:1, JPEG 2000 image quality is superior at compression ratios of 100:1 or more. In addition, JPEG 2000 can achieve lower bit rates than JPEG, whose performance is limited by the minimum number of bits required to encode an 8-by-8 block. The JPEG 2000 architecture supports both lossless and lossy compression and the compression of continuous-tone as well as bi-level images. Key to the new applications that JPEG 2000 supports is the organization of the compressed codestream, which enables several modes of progressive transmission, fixed-rate, fixed-size applications and random access within a compressed image JPEG 2000 is the emerging image compression standard. The JPEG 2000 image compression standard (Part 1) was approved in January 2001. JPEG 2000 chips have been developed, and many corporations, research organizations, and individuals are already offering JPEG 2000 software implementations of, at minimum, Part 1 of the specification.

Software demonstrations will be given of; basic JPEG 2000 functionality (Part 1 of the Standard), the JPIP Client/Server Protocol (Part 9), and JPM - the JPEG 2000 multi-layer compound file format (Part 6).

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