Multiresolution coding of image and video signals

Multiresolution image and video coding schemes offer both excellent coding efficiency and the ability to support scalability. This paper gives an introduction to the principles of multiresolution coding of image and video signals. Besides critically sampled subband pyramids, oversampled pyramid decompositions are discussed. Oversampled subband pyramids are often better suited for scalable coding schemes. Solutions to the bit allocation problem for subband coders with and without quantization noise feedback are presented. Finally, we briefly review spatio-temporal pyramids as the most promising approach to scalable video coding.