A listless minimum zerotree coding algorithm for wavelet image compression

A listless minimum zerotree coding algorithm (LMZC) based on the fast lifting wavelet transform (FLWT) with lower memory requirement and higher compression performance is presented in this paper. Most state-of-the-art image compression techniques based on wavelet transform, such as EZW and SPIHT, exploit the dependency between the subbands in a wavelet transformed image. We propose a minimum zerotree of wavelet coefficients which exploits the dependency not only between the coarser and the finer subbands but also within the lowest frequency subband. And a new listless significance map coding algorithm based on the minimum zerotree, using new flag maps and new scanning order different from Wen-Kuo Lin ct al.'s LZC, is also proposed. A comparison reveals that the PSNR results of LMZC are higher than those of LZC, and the compression performance of LMZC also outperforms that of SPIHT in terms of hardware implementation.