Perceptually lossless High Dynamic Range image compression with JPEG 2000

High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology offers high levels of immersion with a dynamic range meeting and exceeding that of the Human Visual System (HVS). A primary drawback of HDR images and video is that memory and bandwidth requirements are significantly higher than for conventional images and video. Many bits can be wasted coding redundant imperceptible information. The challenge is therefore to develop means for efficiently compressing HDR imagery to a manageable bit rate without compromising perceptual quality. In this paper, an HDR image compression method, based on an HVS optimized wavelet subband weighting method is proposed. The method has been fully integrated into a JPEG 2000 codec. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method outperforms previous approaches and operates in accordance with characteristics of the HVS, tested objectively using a HDR Visible Difference Predictor (VDP).