Interactive archives of scientific data

A focus on qualitative methods of presenting data shows that visualization provides a mechanism for browsing independent of the source of data and is an effective alternative to traditional image-based browsing of image data. To be generally applicable, such visualization methods, however, must be based upon an underlying data model with support for a broad class of data types and structures. Interactive, near-real-time browsing for data sets of interesting size today requires a browse server of considerable power. A symmetric multi-processor with very high internal and external bandwidth demonstrates the feasibility of this concept. Although this technology is likely to be available on the desktop within a few years, the increase in the size and complexity of achieved data will continue to exceed the capacity of 'worksation' systems. Hence, a higher class of performance, especially in bandwidth, will generally be required for on-demand browsing. A few experiments with differing digital compression techniques indicates that a MPEG-1 implementation within the context of a high-performance browse server (i.e., parallized) is a practical method of converting a browse product to a form suitable for network or CD-ROM distribution

Context-Based Scalable Coding and Representation of High Resolution Art Pictures for Remote Data Access

International audienceEROS is the largest database in the world of high resolution art pictures. The TSAR project is designed to open it in a secure, efficient and user-friendly way that involves cryptography and watermarking as well as compression and region-level representation abilities. This paper more particularly addresses the two last points. The LAR codec is first presented as a suitable solution for picture encoding with compression ranging from highly lossy to lossless. Then, we detail the concept of self-extracting region representation, which consists of performing a segmentation process at both the coder and decoder from a highly compressed image, and later locally enhancing the image in a region of interest. The overall scheme provides an efficient, consistent solution for advanced data browsing

TSAR: Secure Transfer OF High Resolution Art Images

International audienceThe EROS (European Research Open System) database hosted at the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) is one of the largest database in the world of Cultural Heritage that is widely recognized for its high resolution images. The French research project TSAR (Transfert Sécurisé d'images d'Art haute Resolution) aims to give the possibility to open this huge amount of art images in a secure and efficient way. For this purpose, we use a mixture of techniques to assure the security of the data involving cryptography and watermarking techniques as well as multi-resolution compression scheme together with a region-level representation. These algorithms are especially optimized for high resolution art images. In particular, this means that the quality of the transmitted images have to be not reduced, implying the use of lossless coding techniques. In this paper we present an overall scheme that provides an efficient, consistent solution for secure data browsing, viewing and transmitting, adoptable by any Cultural Heritage institution

WG1N5315 - Response to Call for AIC evaluation methodologies and compression technologies for medical images: LAR Codec

This document presents the LAR image codec as a response to Call for AIC evaluation methodologies and compression technologies for medical images.This document describes the IETR response to the specific call for contributions of medical imaging technologies to be considered for AIC. The philosophy behind our coder is not to outperform JPEG2000 in compression; our goal is to propose an open source, royalty free, alternative image coder with integrated services. While keeping the compression performances in the same range as JPEG2000 but with lower complexity, our coder also provides services such as scalability, cryptography, data hiding, lossy to lossless compression, region of interest, free region representation and coding

The JPEG2000 still image compression standard

The development of standards (emerging and established) by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) for audio, image, and video, for both transmission and storage, has led to worldwide activity in developing hardware and software systems and products applicable to a number of diverse disciplines [7], [22], [23], [55], [56], [73]. Although the standards implicitly address the basic encoding operations, there is freedom and flexibility in the actual design and development of devices. This is because only the syntax and semantics of the bit stream for decoding are specified by standards, their main objective being the compatibility and interoperability among the systems (hardware/software) manufactured by different companies. There is, thus, much room for innovation and ingenuity. Since the mid 1980s, members from both the ITU and the ISO have been working together to establish a joint international standard for the compression of grayscale and color still images. This effort has been known as JPEG, the Join

Combined Industry, Space and Earth Science Data Compression Workshop

The sixth annual Space and Earth Science Data Compression Workshop and the third annual Data Compression Industry Workshop were held as a single combined workshop. The workshop was held April 4, 1996 in Snowbird, Utah in conjunction with the 1996 IEEE Data Compression Conference, which was held at the same location March 31 - April 3, 1996. The Space and Earth Science Data Compression sessions seek to explore opportunities for data compression to enhance the collection, analysis, and retrieval of space and earth science data. Of particular interest is data compression research that is integrated into, or has the potential to be integrated into, a particular space or earth science data information system. Preference is given to data compression research that takes into account the scien- tist's data requirements, and the constraints imposed by the data collection, transmission, distribution and archival systems

Preserving data integrity of encoded medical images: the LAR compression framework

International audienceThrough the development of medical imaging systems and their integration into a complete information system, the need for advanced joint coding and network services becomes predominant. PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) aims to acquire, store and compress, retrieve, present and distribute medical images. These systems have to be accessible via the Internet or wireless channels. Thus protection processes against transmission errors have to be added to get a powerful joint source-channel coding tool. Moreover, these sensitive data require confidentiality and privacy for both archiving and transmission purposes, leading to use cryptography and data embedding solutions. This chapter introduces data integrity protection and developed dedicated tools of content protection and secure bitstream transmission for medical encoded image purposes. In particular, the LAR image coding method is defined together with advanced securization services

Compression Efficiency for Combining Different Embedded Image Compression Techniques with Huffman Encoding

This thesis presents a technique for image compression which uses the different embedded Wavelet based image coding in combination with Huffman- encoder(for further compression). There are different types of algorithms available for lossy image compression out of which Embedded Zerotree Wavelet(EZW), Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT) and Modified SPIHT algorithms are the some of the important compression techniques. EZW algorithm is based on progressive encoding to compress an image into a bit stream with increasing accuracy. The EZW encoder was originally designed to operate on 2D images, but it can also use to other dimensional signals. Progressive encoding is also called as embedded encoding. Main feature of ezw algorithm is capability of meeting an exact target bit rate with corresponding rate distortion rate(RDF). Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT) is an improved version of EZW and has become the general standard of EZW. SPIHT is a very efficient image compression algorithm that is based on the idea of coding groups of wavelet coefficients as zero trees. Since the order in which the subsets are tested for significance is important in a practical implementation the significance information is stored in three ordered lists called list of insignificant sets (LIS) list of insignificant pixels (LIP) and list of significant pixels (LSP). Modified SPIHT algorithm and the preprocessing techniques provide significant quality (both subjectively and objectively) reconstruction at the decoder with little additional computational complexity as compared to the previous techniques. This proposed method can reduce redundancy to a certain extend. Simulation results show that these hybrid algorithms yield quite promising PSNR values at low bitrates