Decoding compression with reversible embedded wavelets (CREW) codestreams

As the applications of digital imagery expand in resolution and pixel fidel ity there is a greater need for more efficient compression and extraction o f images and subimages. No longer is it sufficient to compress and decompre ss an image for a specific target device. The ability to handle many types of image data, extract images at different resolutions and quality, lossles s and lossy, zoom and pan, and extract regions-of-interest are the new meas ures of image compression system performance. Compression with reversible e mbedded wavelets (CREW) is a high-quality image compression system that is progressive from high compression to lossless, and pyramidal in resolution. CREW supports regions-of-interest, and multiple image types, such as bi-le vel and continuous-tone. This paper describes the CREW system and format, s hows how the correct data can be quickly extracted from a CREW file to supp ort a variety of target devices, describes the mechanisms needed for pannin g, zooming, and fixed-size compression, and explains the superior performan ce on bi-level and graphic images. (C) 1998 SPIE and IS&T. [S1017-9909(98)0 1303-8].