Region based coding scheme with scalability features

In order to satisfy the needs of new applications in a multimedia environment the problem of object-oriented coding has to be addressed. In this paper two main approaches are presented to tackle this problem. First, an algorithm for shape coding is presented. It, is based on a chain coding algorithm where powerful modeling techniques are used to increase the compression ratio. Second, an algorithm for interior coding is described, It is based on an arbitrarily-shaped subband transform followed by a generalized embedded zerotree wavelet algorithm. It is shown in the paper that it achieves good compression results and has additional properties such as supporting arbitrarily shaped regions, being computationally efficient, keeping the same dimensionality in the transformed domain, allowing perfect reconstruction and an intrinsic rate control mechanism. The presented results show that the two algorithms build an efficient basis to design object-oriented video coding schemes.