JPEG2000 Wavelet Compression Spec Approved

According to an EE Times story published today the International Standards Organization's JPEG2000 committee has finalized specs for a new algorithm that compresses images up to 200 times with no appreciable degradation in quality.

The JPEG2000 spec, which will become ISO 15444 when it's officially approved in 2001, uses wavelet transformations instead of Fourier transforms to achieve the performance gain.

A second part of the draft, which adds special-purpose extensions, will follow in 2001. JPEG2000 part one will be the plain-vanilla royalty-free version, but part two can include various types of third-party extensions that may or may not involve royalties.

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