Simplistically universal lossless image coding using integer wavelet transforms and space filling curves

We propose a simplistically universal lossless image codec (SULIC). A conceptually simple approach may be described as follows. The image is decomposed by reversible integer wavelet transforms (RIWT), which function as a recursive prediction process in the encoder. To exploit the remaining correlations within the intra-subband, the subband coefficients are scanned corresponding to their prediction properties. For example, subbands hl and lh (images) are scanned along row and column directions respectively, and for detailed (hh) subbands, we use space filling curves (SFC) for the image scanning method. The SFC method is suitable for use with context based entropy coding, i.e., the Lempel-Ziv algorithm. Since no context between subbands has been used in this work, we use a prediction with partial matching (ppm) encoder in order to compensate for no inter-subband context compression. From the experimental results, the performance of our proposed method is comparable to JPEG-LS and SPIHT.