Low-complexity scalable image compression

We have developed a scalable image compression scheme with a good performance-complexity trade-off. Like JPEG, it is based on the 8/spl times/8 block discrete cosine transform (DCT), but it uses no additional quantization or entropy coding (such as Huffman or arithmetic coding). Bit-rate or quality scalability is enabled by encoding the DCT coefficients bit plane by bit plane, starting at the most significant plane. The individual bit planes are efficiently encoded using simple rectangular zones. Our method offers about the same compression performance as JPEG, but at a significant lower complexity and with the additional feature of scaling the bit rate by simply truncating the generated bit string.