Coding the wavelet spatial orientation tree with low computational complexity

Summary form only given. A very fast, low complexity algorithm for resolution-scalable and random access decoding is presented. The algorithm avoids the multiple passes of bit-plane coding for speed improvement. The decrease in dynamic range of wavelet coefficient magnitudes is efficiently coded. The hierarchical dynamic range coding naturally enables resolution-scalable representation of a wavelet transformed image. The method predicts the dynamic range of energy in each subset based on the dynamic range of energy of a parent set. Speed improvement over SPIHT is up to two times in encoding, and up to four times in decoding. The loss of quality is very small. Our method outperforms the LTW in Oliver et al. (2003), by up to two times in encoding and up to seven times in decoding.