Subband coding of images using asymmetrical filter banks

Abstract

We address the problem of the choice of subband filters in the context of image coding. The ringing effects that occur in subband-based compression schemes are the major unpleasant distortions. A new set of two-band filter banks suitable for image coding applications is presented. The basic properties of these filters are linear phase, perfect reconstruction, asymmetric length, and maximum regularity. The better overall performances compared to the classical QMF subband filters are explained. The asymmetry of the filter lengths results in a better compaction of the energy, especially in the highpass subbands. Moreover, the quantization error is reduced due to the short lowpass synthesis filter. The undesirable ringing effect is considerably reduced due to the good step response of the synthesis lowpass filter. The proposed design takes into account the statistics of natural images and the effect of quantization errors in the reconstructed images, which explains the better coding performance.