An Efficient Compression of Gray Scale Images using Wavelet Transform

Abstract The rapid development of technology and the standardization of digital photography have led to an explosive growth in digital image distribution and reproduction. The enhancement of storage capacity in computer disks and advancement in networking have not been able to keep pace with the demands of handling, storing and finally transmitting huge volume of image data. Only proper image compression technologies seem to offer a solution to this challenge. The importance of digital image compression in multimedia applications has inspired extensive research all over the world. The present study recommends a newly formulated algorithm by computing Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) in combination with thresholding and quadtree decomposition. Findings prove that the proposed technique is at par with EZW image compression algorithm in terms of quality performance at the same bit rate, and obviates the need for employing any other conventional standard image compression techniques.