Layered architecture for navigation in JPEG2000 mega-images

In remote sensing as well as in medical imagery, the great flexibility of JPEG2000 can be used to navigate in mega-images. However, for both application fields, the wide variety of possible tasks leads to many different types of graphical user interfaces (GUI). This paper presents a layered navigation system supporting all types of interfaces. The proposed architecture consists of 3 main layers. The GUI adaptation layer sends the navigation text commands to the second layer on a TCP connection. Thereafter, these commands are translated into JPEG2000 oriented requests. The messages axe then sent to the third layer selecting the relevant part of the JPEG2000 data stream to answer the requests. In our implementation, JPEG2000 requests axe sent through an interactive protocol running over TCP. This protocol is close to the upcoming J2K Interactive Protocol (JPIP, JPEG2000 part 9) but stays at a lower level than its HTTP version. The system was tested with two different kind of GUI's. It stresses the flexibility of the system for many different applications.