JPEG2000 quality scalability without quality layers

Quality scalability is a fundamental feature of JPEG2000, achieved through the use of quality layers that are optimally formed in the encoder by rate-distortion optimization techniques. Two points, related with the practical use of quality layers, may need to be addressed when dealing with JPEG2000 code-streams: 1) the lack of quality scalability of code-streams containing a single or few quality layers and 2) the rate-distortion optimality of windows of interest transmission. Addressing these two points, this paper proposes a mechanism that, without using quality layers, provides competitive quality scalability to code-streams. Its main key-feature is a novel characterization of the code-blocks rate-distortion contribution that does not use distortion measures based on the original image, or related with the encoding process. Evaluations against the common use of quality layers, and against a theoretical optimal coding performance when decoding windows of interest or when decoding the complete image area, suggest that the proposed method achieves close to optimal results.