A Hybrid SPIHT-EBC Image Coder

Among noteworthy zero-tree algorithms is the SPIHT algorithm. For images with textures, high frequency wavelet coefficients are likely to become significant after few scan passes of SPIHT, and therefore the coding results are often insufficient. It is desirable that the low frequency and high frequency components of an image are coded using different strategies. In this paper, we propose a hybrid algorithm using SPIHT and EBC (embedded block coding) to code low frequency and high frequency wavelet coefficients, respectively; the intermediate coding results of low frequency coefficients are used to facilitate the coding operation of high frequency coefficients. Experimental results show that the coding performance can be significantly improved by the hybrid SPIHT-EBC algorithm.