"Bit rate on demand" using pruned tree-structured hierarchical lookup vector quantization

We propose a real-time image coding system, which is capable of adapting instantaneously to the available channel bandwidth. The range of operational bandwidths for this system has a finer calibration than ordinary hierarchical vector quantization (HVQ) or wavelet based hierarchical vector quantization (WHVQ) methods suggested in the literature. These properties make it very attractive for networks with fluctuating available bandwidth, like the Internet. All encoder and decoder operations are strictly constant time per pixel, proceeding through table lookups, and are intrinsically suitable for parallel and hardware implementation.