The Wavelet Stream – Progressive Transmission of Compressed Light Field Data

In this paper we describe the compression of light field data using 4D nonstandard wavelet decomposition. For progressive transmission, storage, and rendering of the compressed light field data the new wavelet stream data structure is introduced. The wavelet coefficients are ordered in decreasing importance, encoding the position of the non discarded coefficients using significance maps. Compared to the vector quantization compression method, the wavelet stream achieves up to 3 times higher compression ratios while producing the same error during reconstruction of the light field data. Despite of the high compression of the data, reasonable frame rates during light field rendering are achieved. CR Categories: I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques—Graphics data structures and data types E.4 [Coding and Information Theory]: Data compaction and compression