Scalable data hiding for online textured 3D terrain visualization

A method for 3D scalable visualization, in a client/server environment is presented. The main idea presented in this paper is to increase the quality of 3D visualization for low bit rate transmission. All informations like texture, digital elevation model and projection systems are merged into a single file. The integration is achieved via data hiding whereas the scalability is realized through the multiresolution nature of JPEG2000 encoding. The embedding step is done in the lossless DWT domain. The strategy is flexible and it is up to the user to decide the level of transform of texture and DEM. In this context a comparison between various possibilities is presented by applying the method to a practical example. It is shown that a very good visualization can be realized with even a tiny fraction of the encoded coefficients.