Progressive image transmission using vector quantization on images in pyramid form

A progressive image transmission scheme in which vector quantization is applied to images represented by pyramids is proposed. A mean pyramid representation of an image is first built up by forming a sequence of reduced-size images by averaging over blocks of 2×2 pixels. A difference pyramid is then built up by taking the differences between successive levels in the mean pyramid. Progressive transmission is achieved by sending all the nodes in the difference pyramid starting from the top level and ending at the bottom level. The kth approximate image can be formed by adding the information of level k to the previously reproduced (k-1)st approximation. To gain efficiency, vector quantization is applied to the difference pyramid of the image on a level-by-level basis. If the errors due to quantization at level k are properly delivered and included in the next level, k+1, then it is demonstrated that the original image can be reconstructed. An entropy coder is used to encode the final residual error image losslessly, thus ensuring perfect reproduction of the original image. The experiments demonstrate that it is possible to achieve simultaneously lossless and progressive transmission with compression. At the intermediate level, the use of vector quantization results in a coding gain over that obtained using only a Huffman coder. Excellent reproduction is achieved at a bit rate of only 0.06 bits/pixel