In this paper, we introduce the quantization index hierarchy, which is used for efficient coding of quantized wavelet and wavelet packet coefficients. A hierarchical classification map is defined in each wavelet subband, which describes the quantized data through a series of index classes. Going from bottom to the top of the tree, neighboring coefficients are combined to form classes that represent some statistics of the quantization indices of these coefficients. Higher levels of the tree are constructed iteratively by repeating this class assignment to partition the coefficients into larger Subsets. The class assignments are optimized using a rate-distortion cost analysis. The optimized tree is coded hierarchically from top to bottom by coding the class membership information at each level of the tree. Context-adaptive arithmetic coding is used to improve coding efficiency. The developed algorithm produces PSNR results that are better than the state-of-art wavelet-based and wavelet packet-based coders in literature.This research was supported by Isik University BAP-05B302 GrantPublisher's Versio
