Group Testing for Wavelet-Based Image Compression

We examine the applicability of group testing to wavelet-based image compression. We first review some recent image compression techniques and explain the group testing framework. We then explain how group testing already has been applied in image compression. In particular, we show that group testing is a generalization of the zerotree coding technique, and that Hwang’s group testing algorithm [3] is equivalent to elementary Golomb codes. We then provide a framework for how to apply group testing to image compression. This framework shows what future work could be done to make effective group testing based image coders. Finally, we introduce a new image coder based on one particular way of applying the group testing framework. Our new algorithm performs competitively with arithmetic-coded SPIHT [12] in terms of rate-distortion performance.