Scalable wavelet coding for synthetic/natural hybrid images

This paper describes the texture representation scheme adopted for MPEG-4 s ynthetic/natural hybrid coding (SNHC) of texture maps and images. The schem e is based on the concept of muitiscale zerotree wavelet entropy (MZTE) cod ing technique, which provides many levels of scalability layers in terms of either spatial resolutions or picture quality. MZTE, with three different modes (single-Q, multi-Q, and bilevel), provides much improved compression efficiency and fine-gradual scalabilities, which are ideal for hybrid codin g of texture maps and natural images. The MZTE scheme is adopted as the bas eline technique for the visual texture coding profile in both the MPEG-4 vi deo group and SNHC group. The test results are presented in comparison with those coded by the baseline JPEG scheme for different types of input image s, MZTE was also rated as one of the top five schemes in terms of compressi on efficiency in the JPEG2000 November 1997 evaluation, among 27 submitted proposals.