A study of JPEG 2000 still image coding versus other standards

JPEG 2000, the new ISO/ITU-T standard for still image coding, is about to be finished. Other new standards have been recently introduced, namely JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC. This paper puts into perspective the performance of these by evaluating JPEG 2000 versus JPEG-LS and MPEG-4 VTC, as well as the older but widely used JPEG. The study concentrates on compression efficiency, although complexity and set of supported functionalities are also evaluated. Lossless compression efficiency as well as the lossy rate-distortion behavior is discussed. The principles behind each algorithm are briefly described and an outlook on the future of image coding is given. The results show that the choice of the “best” standard depends strongly on the application at hand.