Protection of Regions of Interest against Data Loss in a Generalized Multiple Description Framework

We present a simple and ef£cient scheme for protecting a region of interest (ROI) in an image sent across lossy communication networks. To increase the probability that the ROI is received with high quality, we extend the unequal loss protection framework of MD-SPIHT [1] by adding more redundancy to the ROI than to other parts of the image. The ROI is therefore heavily protected at the expense of lower protection in the background. In addition, the ROI is coded to a higher bit rate than the rest of the image. This method can be used for packet erasure networks or in the generalized multiple description coding framework.