An embedded image coding system based on tarp filter with classification

Recently, image compression systems based on the tarp filter, a type of recursive filter, have attracted much attention in the image processing community. While providing very good performance when used in a non-embedded manner, the original tarp-filter-based algorithm performs less competitively when used in an embedded manner (in spite of its operation on bitplanes), because of its raster scan encoding order. We propose a Tarp-filter-based system which utilizes Classification of coefficients to achieve Embedding (TCE). The algorithm classifies the coefficients according to their statistical properties, and the tarp filter only runs on the single class on which it tends to generate accurate probability estimates. TCE can achieve much better rate-distortion embedding performance than the original tarp-filter-based system when used in an embedded manner; it achieves slightly better performance than SPIHT with arithmetic coding, and is comparable with JPEG-2000 performance on average.