New virtual SPIHT tree structures for very low memory strip-based image compression

Images obtained with wavelet-based compression techniques such as set-partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) yield very good results. However, a lot of memory space is required as the wavelet coefficients for the whole image need to be stored for the process of set-partitioning coding. In this letter, we propose new virtual SPIHT tree structures for very low memory strip-based image compression. The advantage of the proposed work is that it reduces the memory requirements for practical software and hardware implementations significantly without sacrificing performance.