Context-based multiple description wavelet image coding

Multiple description coding is a source coding technique that produces several descriptions of a single information source, such that various reconstruction qualities are obtained from different subsets of the descriptions. It thus can provide error resilience to information transmitted on lossy networks. Among previous works, MDs for image coding were generated via polyphase transform and selective quantization, performed in the wavelet domain. In this paper, we present an effective way to exploit the special statistical properties of the wavelet decomposition to provide improved coding efficiency, in the same general framework. We propose a novel coding scheme that efficiently utilizes contextual information, extracted from another polyphase component, to improve the coding efficiency of each redundant component. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed coder outperforms its predecessor across the entire redundancy range, and that the improvement in coding efficiency can indeed be attributed primarily to the effective utilization of contextual information.