The JPEG - 2000 Still Image Compression Standard � ( Last Revised : June 30 , 2001 )

Digital imagery is pervasive in our world today. Consequently, standards for the efficient representation and interchange of digital images are essential. To date, some of the most successful still image compression standards have resulted from the ongoing work of the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). This group operates under the auspices of Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1 (JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1), a collaborative effort between the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector (ITUT). Both the JPEG [1, 2] and JPEG-LS [3] standards were born from the work of the JPEG committee. For the last few years, the JPEG committee has been working towards the establishment of a new standard known as JPEG 2000 (i.e., ISO/IEC 15444). The fruits of these labors are now coming to bear, as JPEG-2000 Part 1 (i.e., ISO/IEC 15444-1 [4]) has recently been approved as a new international standard. In this paper, we provide a detailed technical description of the JPEG-2000 Part-1 codec, in addition to a brief overview of the JPEG-2000 standard. This exposition is intended to serve as a reader-friendly starting point for those interested in learning about JPEG 2000. Although many details are included in our presentation, some details are necessarily omitted. The reader should, therefore, refer to the standard [4] before attempting an implementation. The JPEG-2000 codec realization in the JasPer software [5–7] may also serve as a practical guide for implementors. (See Appendix A for more information about JasPer.) The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section II begins with a overview of the JPEG-2000 standard. This is followed, in Section III, by a detailed description of the JPEG2000 Part-1 codec. Finally, we conclude with some closing remarks in Section IV. Throughout our presentation, a basic understanding of image coding is assumed.