Multiple description image coding using contourlet transform

In our work we present multiple description coding (MDC) scheme using contourlet transform (CT) for gray scale image. The principle is to prove performance of our algorithm in the coding field in contrast of wavelet that is widely used for image coding. The goal of our approach is to encode directional subbands resulting from the directional stage decomposition, to form the descriptions compressed and transmitted over different channels. The main objective of this work is to encode the source into four descriptions for transmission over packet loss channels, Most of multiple description scenarios are implemented in transform domain. A controlled amount of correlation is appended to the formed descriptions using a pairwise correlating transform (PCT). The experimental results of CT compared to discret wavelet transform (DWT) show that our method achieves better performance in term of delivered peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and visual image quality reconstruction.