Multispectral KLT-wavelet data compression for Landsat thematic mapper images

The authors report a methodology that enhances the compression of Landsat thematic mapper (TM) multispectral imagery, while reducing the image information loss. The method first removes interband correlation of the image data by use of the Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT) to produce the image principal components. Each principal component is spatially decorrelated using a discrete wavelet transform. The resulting coefficients are then quantized and losslessly encoded. Image compressions of typically 80:1 demonstrate that the method should be quite suitable for rapid browsing applications where small amounts of image loss are tolerable.<>