Design of High-Performance Wavelets for Image Coding Using a Perceptual Time Domain Criterion

Abstract

This paper presents a new biorthogonal linear-phase wavelet design for image compression. Instead of calculating the prototype filters as spectral factors of a half-band filter, the design is based on the direct optimization of the lowpass analysis filter using an objective function directly related to a perceptual criterion for image compression. This function is defined as the product of the theoretical coding gain and an index called the peak-to-peak ratio, which was shown to have high correlation with perceptual quality. A distinctive feature of the proposed technique is a procedure by which, given a “good” starting filter, “good” filters of longer lengths are generated. The results are excellent, showing a clear improvement in perceptual image quality. Also, we devised a criterion for constraining the coefficients of the filters in order to design wavelets with minimum ringing.