Compression of NOAA/AVHRR data with a wavelet transform

An attempt has been made to assess the efficiency of image data compression by wavelet transform encoding using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin istration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) images. R aw and derived images were compressed to various levels and a number of par ameters in the decompressed images compared with those obtained using raw d ata as a yardstick against which to measure the loss of information due to compression. Unsupervised classification, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values and brightness temperatures appeared to suffer little d egradation and only for fractal dimensions was there significant loss of in tegrity at compression rates of up to a factor of 32. The general conclusio n from a visual inspection of the effect of such compressions on artificial ly generated geometrical imagettes confirms the effectiveness of this metho d of compression.