Some key advantages of JPEG 2000 vs.

JPEG

Wavelet based better compression quality

Part 1 allows the choice of wavelet kernels, an irreversible 9-7 floating point and a reversible 5-3 integer transform. The 9-7 provides slightly higher image quality, the 5-3 allows for lossless compression. The quantization type is tied into the choice of wavelet, deadzone scalar quantizer for the 9-7, no quantization allowed for the 5-3, although you can still get lossy 5-3 performance by dropping bitplanes or subresolutions from the encoded data.

Scalable by resolution, quality, color channel, location in image.

This is achieved by organizing the codestream in different ways. Progressive by resolution is achieved by organizing the codestream by wavelet resolution, quality progressive is achieved by organizing it by encoded bitplane (so the more data you decode, the higher the accuracy of your decoded wavelet coefficient), and color progressive is achieved by putting the color channels successively in the file. Spatial progressivity can be achieved in 2 ways: by tiling and organizing the file to have the tiles of interest first, or by creating so called "precincts", which define areas of the image that can be put in order of importance.

Lossless encoding, including lossy to lossless scalability

This is done using either the progressive by resolution option by decoding only to a certain subresolution or the progressive by quality option by decoding all quality layers for lossless, fewer for lossy.

Deep bit depths, up to 38 bits.

The standard is very flexible, allows huge images (up to 2^32 rows and columns), 16384 components, component subsampling, different bit depths for each channel, and other variations.

Region of Interest encoding and progressive decoding.

This allows the encoder to select a region of the image to be encoded at a higher quality than the rest of the image. This is accomplished by shifting the bitplanes of the background coefficients down, so that the ROI coefficient bitplanes are encoded first and therefore decoded first, so the ROI comes up first. An arbitrary number of disjoint regions may be defined. The ROI computation is all done on the encoder; no modifications are needed on the decoder to decompress images that include an ROI.

Error resilience.
This is achieved through a packetized codestream. There are also several optional features such as resync markers, table of content markers and start of packet and end of packet markers that add more error resilience. Also, the codestream can be reorganized to have all the markers in the beginning, for situations where you can control the bit error rate.

1 Aware, Inc. 2002

Structure of the JPEG 2000 Standard

Part 1: core features.

Officially approved Dec. 2000. Published by ISO recently, available for purchase from link at http://www.jpeg.org Part 1 is intended to be for general digital imaging applications.

Part 2, Extensions.
This intended to be for niche markets like hyperspectral, remote sensing. Approved as an International Standard in October 2001. Includes things like multicomponent wavelet transforms, different quantization schemes, any wavelet transform (the user can define the kernel in the header), arbitrary decomposition trees, overlapping tiles to avoid tiling artifacts, arbitrary DC offsets.

Part 3. Motion JPEG2000.

No interframe coding, simply a QuickTime like file format for storing a set of JPEG2000 still images. Approved as an International Standard in October 2001. This is simply a file format that enables inclusion of many Part 1 still JPEG2000 images into a single file to create a motion file.

Part 4. Compliance Testing.

Defines compliance tests for Part 1. To be approved as International Standard in May, 2002. Aware is a supplier of test images for this part. This part is very challenging, due to the nature of the standard and the scalability. Each JPEG2000 image actually represents many decoded versions of the image, so how do you test for compliance, do you force every decoder to decoder all the different versions that are available in the codestream? After lots of work, tests have been set up that include a set of test images and a set of error bounds that your decoded image must meet. The tests are by no means exhaustive (in terms of combining all the different sets of options), because that is basically impossible, due to the extreme versatility and feature richness of the standard. Aware, Inc. is very active in the Compliance part of the standard, contributing test codestreams and working on the documents.

Part 5. Reference software.

C and Java reference software for Part 1. Approved as an International Standard in October 2001. This was written by a couple Universities, one in Canada (Univ. of British Columbia) and one in Switzerland (EPFL), sponsored by active companies like Canon and Eriksson. Big issue here is that the reference software is not complete, it actually fails some of the compliance tests of Part 4.

Part 6. Compound image file format.

Allows different codecs to be used for different parts of a document (text, images, etc.). To be finalized in 2002. This includes JPEG2000 Part 1 as the codec for images.

2 Aware, Inc. 2002

New parts started recently: These new parts are still in the early stages, where they are defining requirements and will ask for technology proposals this year. Exception is the JPIP which is on a fast track; they are trying to get something out by early 2003.

JPIP: JPEG 2000 client-server protocol requirements.

The idea here is that only the JPEG2000 experts can define a protocol that completely exploits all the scalability and features of JPEG2000. Driven mainly by Kodak, the British National body and the Australian national body. A document with technical requirements has been put out, a couple of proposals emerged: JPIK and HTTP.

JP3D: for 3-dimensional data

3D wavelet transform and 3D bit modelling and arithmetic coding. Driven mainly by Los Alamos National labs.

JPSEC: Security
Security, authentication, data integrity, protection of copyright and intellectual property. Driven mainly by EPFL in Switzerland.

3 Aware, Inc. 2002