Study on the application of embedded zero-tree wavelet algorithm in still images compression

Abstract

An image has directional selection capability with high frequency through wavelet transformation. It is coincident with the visual characteristics of human eyes. The most important visual characteristic in human eyes is the visual covering effect. The embedded Zero-tree Wavelet (EZW) coding method completes the same level coding for a whole image. In an image, important regions (regions of interest) and background regions (indifference regions) are coded through the same levels. On the basis of studying the human visual characteristics, that is, the visual covering effect, this paper employs an image-compressing method with regions of interest, i.e., an algorithm of Embedded Zero-tree Wavelet with Regions of Interest (EZWROI Algorism) to encode the regions of interest and regions of non-interest separately. In this way, the lost important information in the image is much less. It makes full use of channel resource and memory space, and improves the image quality in the regions of interest. Experimental study showed that a resumed image using an EZW_ROI algorithm is better in visual effects than that of EZW on condition of high compression ratio.