Prioritized region of interest coding in JPEG2000

A method is proposed to encode multiple regions of interest in the JPEG2000 image-coding framework. The algorithm is based on the rearrangement of packets in the code-stream to place the regions of interest before the background coefficients. In order to improve the quality of the reconstructed image, partial background information is included with the regions of interest. The method makes use of a Gaussian priority distribution to assign different priority levels to background and region of interest packets. The priority level is in turn used to determine how much background information should be included with the regions of interest. The proposed technique is fully compatible with the current JPEG2000 standard and allows transmission of different regions of interest with different priorities. Experimental results demonstrating the validity of the proposed approach are presented and compared with existing region of interest coding techniques.