Image coding using blocked zerotree

A blocked zerotree coding algorithm for compression of subband image is proposed. Significance of blocks with respect to a certain threshold are coded with a set of transition rules for the significance of blocks. Significant blocks are quantized by vector quantization. The basic idea for this coding approach are: 1) Subband images are coded by blocks, 2) Important blocks based on the significance of blocks are coded and quantized, 3) Multiband codebook which is composed of sub-codebooks dedicated for each threshold and subband level is adapted to produce good reproduction vectors for vector quantization. The compression results are similar to Shapiro's zerotree coding even though ours are obtained without entropy coding of bit streams from blocked zerotree encoder. If an entropy coding is applied to the bitstream, PSNR will be improved.