Rate-distortion estimation for fast JPEG2000 compression at low bit-rates

In JPEG2000 block coding, all coding passes are generated before rate allocation is performed among code blocks. Unwanted passes are then discarded. For low bit-rate coding, this results in a large number of coding passes being discarded. A rate-distortion estimation method that enables precompression rate-distortion optimisation to be carried out, wherein only the required passes need to be coded is presented. Experiments using the proposed technique demonstrate speed-up factors ranging from 1.17 to 1.78 at 0.0625 bpp, for JPEG2000 compression.