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Two-Band Hybrid FIRIIR Filters for Image Compression

Jianyu Lin, Member, IEEE, and Mark J. T. Smith, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractTwo-band analysissynthesis lters or wavelet lters are used pervasively for compressing natural images. Both FIR and IIR lters have been studied in this context, the former being the most popular. In this paper, we examine the compression performance of these two-band lters in a dyadic wavelet decomposition and attempt to isolate features that contribute most directly to the performance gain. Then, employing the general exact reconstruction condition, hybrid FIRIIR analysissynthesis lters are designed to maximize compression performance for natural images. Experimental results are presented that compare performance with the popular biorthogonal lters in terms of peak SNR, subjective quality, and computational complexity. Index TermsBiorthogonal lters, hybrid FIRIIR lters, image compression.

I. INTRODUCTION UBBAND/WAVELET decompositions have been the topic of extensive study for more than three decades [1][5] and have been applied in dyadic and other tree structures for the purpose of compression. Linear-phase FIR biorthogonal wavelet lters have been particularly popular, as underscored by their use in the JPEG2000 standard [4]. They are easy to implement and have been shown to have higher compression performance for natural images than orthogonal lters. IIR lters have also been considered and shown to have complexity/performance advantages [6], [7], as have hybrid FIRIIR lters [8], [9], though to a lesser extent. But none of these lters have been as generally accepted as the biorthogonal FIR lters for coding purposes. There are a number of interdependent lter characteristics purported to be important to coding performance, such as transform compaction, lter magnitude response, stopband rejection, lter length, and linearity of the phase response. However, the ideal tradeoffs among all these characteristics are not understood in a precise way. It has been observed that biorthogonal lters (which have linear phase but higher relative passband/stopband deviation) have better compression performance than orthogonal lters, which do not have linear phase, but better magnitude characteristics. Most of these comparative examinations have focused on phase characteristics, attributing the biorthogonal performance gain to linear phase [10], [17],
Manuscript received September 27, 2010; revised January 29, 2011; accepted March 15, 2011. Date of publication April 05, 2011; date of current version October 19, 2011. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Prof. Ton Kalker. J. Lin is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University of Technology, WA 6845, Australia (e-mail: jianyulin@ hotmail. com). M. J. T. Smith is with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA (e-mail: mjts@purdue.edu). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIP.2011.2134860

[18], [11]. In this paper, compression performance is considered in the context of tradeoffs involving both time and frequency characteristics. Observations and validations indicate that the improved compression performance of biorthogonal lters is impacted most signicantly by effectively balancing the tradeoff between energy compaction (among subbands) and time-domain localization. To exploit this condition, the general perfect reconstruction conditions are employed. This allows the biorthogonal perfect reconstruction constraints on the analysis lters to be relaxed, resulting in a better compromise between transform compaction and lter length while minimizing the degree of deviation from orthogonality for the analysis low-pass lter. The resulting lters form a new class of hybrid FIRIIR lters, as shown later on, that are competitive alternatives to biorthogonal lters. In the next section, we examine the properties that inuence compression performance, and then in the subsequent section exploit these ndings to design lters that yield improvements. PSNR performance, subjective quality, and complexity are compared with the existing FIR biorthogonal lters. The hybrid FIRIIR lters are shown to have advantages over biorthogonal FIR lters. II. PROPERTIES AND COMPARISONS A. Energy Compaction versus Time-Domain Localization It is well known that the spectral energy in natural images is concentrated in the low-frequency region, as shown in Fig. 1(a). Therefore, a signicant percentage of the total output energy for the high-frequency channel comes from aliasing. Reducing the aliasing energy by narrowing the transition band would effectively reduce the total output energy for the high-frequency channel. For the dyadic decomposition structure, all the decomposed subbands are derived from the high-pass analysis lter, the only exception being the dc band. Thus, it can be proved that for signals with monotonic spectral rolloff, the energy compaction among subbands of maximally at orthogonal lters improves as the transition band narrows, which enhances compression performance. This point is illustrated in Fig. 1, where the high-pass lter of Sym8 is compared with the high-pass lter of Sym2. The nomenclature is adopted from MATLAB, i.e., Sym denotes Daubechies least asymmetric wavelets with increases, the transition band narvanishing moments. As rows; the frequency response approaches that of an ideal lter in the limit. Because of the spectral rolloff associated with natural images, as shown in Fig. 1(a), the total output energy from Sym8 is dramatically less than that from Sym2, as shown in Fig. 1(b). Since the high-frequency channel aliasing energy is directly related to the lter transition band, it is apparent that the channel

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Fig. 1. (a) Plot showing the image spectrum and the high-pass magnitude responses for Sym2 and Sym8. (b) Plot of the high-frequency channel output spectrum of (a) for Sym2 (thin dashed line) and Sym8 (thick solid line).

TABLE I AVERAGE PSNR AS A FUNCTION OF VANISHING MOMENTS

energy decreases as is increased, leading to greater energy compaction for natural image spectra. One might therefore expect compression performance to increase monotonically as the lter length increases and the lters approach ideal. But this is not the case. A breakdown occurs, which is related to loss of time-domain localization. This effect is illustrated empirically in Table I, which shows the average PSNR versus the number of vanishing moments for several popular test images.1 For simplicity, we show the averages taken over bit rates of 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, 1, and 2 bits/pixel, with the footnote that this same pattern exists for each bit rate. The table clearly shows the convexity of the interplay between compaction (which is improved by increasing ) and time-domain localization (which is improved by decreasing the lter length). An initial performance gain can be seen as is increased. But as the length becomes long, the lack of time localization starts to dominate, leading to convex performance behavior. The peak in performance is image dependent. For many natural images, it occurs at or about . This effect combined with computational complexity considerations makes using relatively short lters attractive.
1Throughout this paper, image coding is performed using the SPIHT algorithm [3] with six-level dyadic decomposition. Since asymmetric lters are involved in this study, for simplicity, periodic extension was used to ensure a size limited decomposition. To avoid discontinuities at the boundaries, image edges were smoothed to the center value (128) with a cosine envelope. For real system implementations, symmetric extension can be used to avoid boundary discontinuities [14].

B. Comparison of Biorthogonal and Orthogonal Filters Arguably, the dominant characteristic associated with high-performance subband/wavelet lter banks is good frequency selectivity. However, magnitude response characteristics such as stopband rolloff and the phase of the lters are also important with respect to designing a high-performance lter bank or wavelet transform. Insight with respect to the relative importance of these characteristics can be gained by empirical comparisons, like the ones shown in Table II.2 This table compares the Daubechies orthogonal wavelet db4; the linear-phase 9/7 Daubechies biorthogonal wavelet bior44; and the Sym4 lter with approximate linear phase. Note, all of lters have four vanishing moments, and in the spectral decomposition used to obtain db4 and Sym4, roots are selected such that db4 has minimum phase and Sym4 has near linear phase, both db4 and Sym4 have the same length 8. Comparing the biorthogonal lters with the orthogonal lters (bior44 versus Sym4 and db4), we see a gain attributable to the linear-phase biorthogonal lters. But, what is causing the improvement? Is it the phase or the magnitude response? An answer is suggested by comparing db4 (minimum phase) with Sym4 (approximately linear phase), both of which have the same magnitude response. An additional experiment was performed (just for comparison), where the db4 was converted to
2Although the results shown in Table II are for the test image Lena, similar relative PSNR results were obtained for other images we tested.

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Fig. 2. Comparison of the magnitude responses. Left: magnitude responses of the 9/7 and the Sym4. Right: magnitude responses of the 5/3 and the Sym2.

TABLE II PSNR CODING RESULTS FOR THE TEST IMAGE LENA

a lter with identical magnitude response but linear phase. This was done using the discrete Fourier transform, preserving the magnitude response and zeroing the phase, and implementing the lter in the cyclic frequency domain, as described in [12]. The converted lter is denoted cvt db4 in Table II.3 Comparing these results involving depositions with different phase, it is evident that some gain can be attributed to phase linearity. But even with linear phase, a gap remains in performance between the biorthogonal and orthogonal ltersa gap attributable to the magnitude response. C. Magnitude Response Characteristics As shown earlier, in addition to time localization and phase linearity effects, magnitude response characteristics also contribute to the performance gain. The ideal case would be to have lters of negligible length (maximum time localization), unity passband gain, innite stopband rejection, and zero transition band. But, of course, this is precluded by the uncertainty principle and other practical considerations (like stability), which imply that the best lters for subband decomposition will reect tradeoffs among localization, passband and stopband deviations, transition bandwidth, phase deviations from linearity, and complexity. Fixing the lter length to be relatively short (less than 10 taps) and limiting the linear-phase deviation to be small, in accordance with the earlier discussion, we now consider the effects of magnitude response deviation from the ideal. The popular classes of analysissynthesis lters can be derived from factoring a half-band product lter [13], [10].
3To achieve linear phase while keeping the magnitude response the same, cvt

Factoring that splits reciprocal roots leads to orthogonal lters, which can have approximately linear phase. These lters can also be optimal in the classical lter design sense. Alternatively, factoring that preserves phase linearity leads to biorthogonal lters, albeit with loss of optimality [13], [10]. However, the resulting magnitude response deviations can marginally enhance coding performance for natural images if those deviations are favorably constrained. Such is the case with the 9/7 lters. Observe in Fig. 2(a) the comparison between the orthogonal Sym4 and biorthogonal 9/7 lters. The stopband and passband deviations in the former are well behaved and monotonic. The 9/7 lters, on the other hand, display ripple behavior in the low-pass lter passband and overshoot behavior in the high-pass lter passband. These negatives, however, are offset by a recession in the high-pass lter transition band. That is to say, the crossover point between the low- and high-pass lters for the biorthogonal lters is shifted slightly above the center frequency , in contrast to the crossover point for the Sym4 lters. The result of this shift is a small increase of the cutoff frequency accompanied by a corresponding reduction of aliasing energy in the high-frequency subbands. A similar and more dramatic example of this characteristic is evident in the comparison of the orthogonal Sym2 and biorthogonal 5/3 lters shown in Fig. 2(b). The shift in the crossover point is much more exaggerated, but unfortunately so are the passband deviations. Because of these signicant deviations from the ideal, the 5/3 lters do not perform as well as the 9/7 lters. However, both the 5/3 and 9/7 biorthogonal lters beat their orthogonal Sym2 and Sym4 counterparts, owing to the positive interplay between the passband/stopband deviations and the aliasing reduction. The advantage of the biorthogonal over orthogonal lters can also be seen by examining the coding gain, as demonstrated by Aase and Ramstad [15]. Sufce it to say, small magnitude deviations from the ideal can be advantageous, where the aliasing reduction effect (from the shift of cutoff frequency) outweighs the passband/stopband deviations, leading to a better compromise between energy compaction and time-domain localization. In the next section, we exploit this key observation to design new biorthogonal lters. III. BIORTHOGONAL FIRIIR HYBRID FILTERS Most of the gain associated with subband/wavelet coders comes from the compaction achieved by the frequency-selective analysis lter bank. As discussed in the earlier sections,

db4 is by necessity a recursive lter. However, it has been shown that such a conversion keeps the effective support of the lters and does not degrade the compression gain [12].

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TABLE III COEFFICIENTS OF HYBRID1 AND HYBRID2 FILTERS

on top of having good frequency selectivity, important secondary gains can be achieved through phase linearity and transition band modications to the magnitude response that lower high-frequency channel aliasing energy. In this section, we consider the formulation of new analysis lters that are short (comparable to the 5/3 biorthogonal lters) but with improved frequency-domain characteristics, consistent with earlier observation. Simple reoptimization of the lter coefcients does not result in demonstrably consistent improvement, owing primarily to the constrained nature of the exact reconstruction conditions for FIR lter banks

where

(4) These reconstruction conditions have the attractive feature that they allow the analysis lters and to be chosen independently. The only restriction is that should be stable, which means no zeros on the unit circle. A consequence of the generality of (3) is that the synthesis lters could be recursive, but still quite interesting if these lters can be implemented with efciency greater than or equal to their FIR counterpart. Using (3), we can choose analysis lters in a virtually unconstrained fashion based on desired frequency-domain characteristics. In light of the observations from Section II regarding good frequency-domain characteristics, the Sym2 analysis low-pass lter (no passband deviation) and the 5/3 analysis high-pass lter (strong rejection of aliasing) were chosen for the analysis pair of the new lters, i.e., (5)

(1)

and are the low- and high-pass analysis where lters, respectively, and and are the low- and high-pass synthesis lters, respectively. However, employing the more general perfect reconstruction conditions (2) we can consider a broader class of solutions. Given an arbitrary and , the synthesis lters pair of analysis lters and as determined by the reconstruction conditions above, are (3)

is the low-pass analysis lter of the Sym2, with , and and are the normalization constants. Computing using (4), we obtain where (6) The corresponding synthesis lters are then derived directly from (3). To increase computational efciency, we modify the value of from to 4.0. This conversion

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now linear phase as is the synthesis lter bank. The converted Hybrid1 set results are shown in Table IV, and are denoted cvt H1. As can be seen, there is a measurable gain of about 0.2 dB attributable to changing the phase, which motivates the following consideration of linear-phase FIRIIR hybrid lters. To construct linear-phase FIRIIR hybrid lters, we start with the linear-phase 5/3 low-pass lter and optimize the reciprocal roots affecting the passband so that the passband magnitude response approximates that of the Sym2. As previously, the optimized coefcients are converted to integers in order to realize computational savings. The resulting lters, which we call Hybrid2, are given by

(9)
Fig. 3. Low-pass lter magnitude responses of the 5/3 lters, Sym2 lters, Hybrid1 lters, and Hybrid2 lters.

from oating point precision to integer results in a simple and stable denominator (7) is the normalization constant. In direct form, the analwhere ysis lters of (5) are given by

The low-pass lter frequency response is shown in Fig. 3. The close approximation to the Sym2 and Hybrid1 is evident, as is the notable improvement over the 5/3 low-pass lter. Using (4), we obtain (10) Then, the synthesis lters are derived from (3). Filter coefcients of the Hybrid2 are shown in Table III. The Hybrid2 lter test results (denoted H2) are also shown in Table IV. As can be seen, Hybrid2 performance matches that of the converted Hybrid1 lters cvt H1, which implies that the PSNR performance difference in Hybrid1 can be ascribed to the nonlinear phase. Comparing the PSNR performance of Hybrid2 with the 5/3 lters, the improvement is signicant, normally in the range of 0.30.7 dB. The performance improvement of the Hybrid1 and Hybrid2 over the original 5/3 and Sym2 can also be observed using the theoretical coding gain [19]. As discussed, the gain of the new lters comes from a better tradeoff between compaction and localization, exploiting the spectral rolloff present in natural images. Table V compares the coding gains for Sym2, 5/3, Hybrid1, and Hybrid2. The results are consistent with coding results shown earlier using the SPIHT coder. The subjective quality associated with the coded images coincides with expectation. The performance results of the hybrid lters are better than the 5/3 lters and comparable to the 9/7 lters (or better than the 9/7 for some viewers), as shown in Fig. 4, for a section of the Caf image coded at 0.5 bits/pixel. The PSNR for the Caf image coded at this rate using the 5/3 lters is 26.04, compared to 26.36 for the Hybrid1 and 26.63 for the Hybrid2. The 9/7 biorthogonal lters result in a PSNR of 26.58. Interestingly, the arithmetic complexity of the hybrid lters is less than that of the 9/7 lters. The arithmetic complexity for the Hybrid1 lters, as conveyed by multiplies and adds, is quite modest. The FIR part can be implemented using two additions per data point (1-D transform) for decomposition and three additions for reconstruction. For the recursion in reconstruction, one extra addition and multiplication is needed. Thus, the combined complexity of both decomposition and reconstruction is six additions and one multiplication.

(8) Perhaps not surprisingly, the coefcient conversion to integer precision does not change the analysis lter frequency response dramatically, as shown in Fig. 3, nor is the compression performance in our test results affected by this change. We call this new FIRIIR hybrid lter set Hybrid1. Coefcients of the Hybrid1 lters are listed in Table III. Its compression performance is evaluated for many test images; results on seven specic test images are presented in Table IV, along with benchmark comparisons against the Sym2 and 5/3 lters. Examining the results in Table IV for Sym2, 5/3, and Hybrid1, we see the general improvement in performance for the new lter set. In addition, Hybrid1 can be implemented very efciently since the numerator coefcients are simple integers (1, 2, 7, 4) and (1, 2, 1), and the synthesis lter recursion is only rst order. On the negative side, however, is the nonlinear lter phase, which has been observed previously to impede performance. Although the net gain is positive, how much is nonlinear phase impeding performance and what additional improvements might be realized if linear phase were imposed on the lters? To investigate these obvious questions, we converted the low-pass Hybrid1 lter to linear phase while keeping the magnitude response unchanged. This conversion results in a modied low-pass lter that has an IIR. However, as shown in [12], the decomposition and reconstruction can be performed in the cyclic frequency domain without appreciable variation in performance. Since the high-pass lter already has symmetric coefcient, the entire analysis decomposition is

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TABLE IV COMPARISON OF THE FIR-IIR HYBRID FILTERS WITH SYM2 AND THE 5/3

The Hybrid2 lters require 3.5 additions per data point for decomposition. For the recursive reconstruction, we can employ difference equations based on a parallel form implementation (11) where . Since is a very small, it can be approximated by a few terms of binary precision , which allows it to be simplied to two additions. However, for six levels of decompositions (as used in our tests), errors tend to accumulate from one level to the other if this approximation is employed. To reduce the accumulated errors to acceptable levels, we can reconstruct levels 2 and

above using slightly higher precision , and level 1 with (which accounts for more than 75% of the total reconstruction data). In this way, the recursion can be implemented with an average of 7.5 additions per data point, leading to a total count of 11 additions per data point to perform the entire reconstruction. Table IV shows the coding results using the approximations just mentioned. As can be seen, the results are essentially identical to the direct implementation. Combining analysis and synthesis together, the complexity is 14.5 additions. The arithmetic complexity of the two hybrid lters is compared with that of the 9/7 and the 5/3 in Table VI. We can also consider the implementation from another perspective. The small value of in (11) implies that the

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Fig. 4. Portion of decoded Caf image at 0.5 bpp. (a) Original image. (b) Coded with the 5/3 lters. (c) Coded with the 9/7 lters. (d) Coded with the Hybrid1 lters. (e) Coded with the Hybrid2 lters.

TABLE V THEORETICAL CODING GAIN (IN DECIBELS) FOR THE TEST IMAGES LENA, BARBARA, GOLDHILL, BIKE, CAF, WOMAN, AND FRANCE

TABLE VI COMPARISONS OF ARITHMETIC COMPLEXITY

decay in the recursion is very fast, suggesting that the impulse response can be truncated to a low-order FIR lter. Accepting this, we can retain only the ve largest nonzero coefcients, to reconstruct level 1, and use the seven largest coefcients to reconstruct

levels 2 and above. The reconstruction results are also shown in the Table IV, which are very close to the exact implementation. In fact, errors are actually much smaller than the quantization step size (256 gray levels), which means that after rounding, there is a perfect match to the original signal if no compression is performed. Such an implementation would require complexity of 2.25 multiplications plus 11.5 additions (combining decomposition and reconstruction together), a bit more complex than the approximated direct recursive IIR implementation discussed earlier. Both hybrid lter sets are computationally efcient and result in high coding performance. It was noted through the comparisons in Table I that performance increases with lter order (and the concomitant reduction in high-frequency channel aliasing energy) up to a point. After this, the effect of loss of time localization starts to dominate and performance slowly diminishes.

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TABLE VII CODING RESULTS FOR LINEAR-PHASE HYBRID FILTERS. THE ANALYSIS HIGH-PASS FILTER (LINEAR-PHASE IIR) IS CONVERTED FROM THE MAGNITUDE RESPONSE OF THE HIGH-PASS FILTER WITH ONE EXTRA ATTENUATING ZERO AT 1

This observation motivates the question, would an extrapolation of the hybrid lters to higher order result in future improved performance? And, how could such an extrapolation be performed? To address the latter question, recall that to generate the Hybrid1 lters, we started with the 5/3 biorthogonal lters and replaced the 5/3 low-pass lter with the Sym2 low-pass lter, which has much better magnitude response characteristics. This is equivalent to using the Sym2 low-pass lter for the Hybrid1 low-pass lter and the high-pass Sym1 convolved with for the

Hybrid1 high-pass lter. Since the goal is to exploit the passband-transition band characteristics mentioned earlier, we can extrapolate these characteristics to higher orders by expressing the Sym lters in terms of their order : The Hybrid1 low-pass lter low-pass lter The Hybrid1 high-pass lter low-pass lter convolved with

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valid for . To assess the performance gain associated with extrapolated hybrid lters, we can evaluate the linear-phase equivalent lters, as we did in Table II. The results using these new lters are shown in Table VII for several of the popular test images, along with coding results using the 9/7 biorothogonal lters. The comparisons are interesting. As the lter order is increased (moving from to ), we observe that performance tends to peak and then drop off as time localization effects start to erode performance. The point at which the peak occurs is dependent on the image. For Bike and Caf, the peak occurs around and . For Lena, Barbara, and Boldhill, the peak is higher, at or above . For France, the peak occurs early at . In all cases, when looking at these peaks over the range to , the average coding results exceed those of the 9/7 biorthogonal lters. Looking more holistically at the lter bank section of the coding systems, one can consider optimizing the lters at the decomposition stage level. This was the recognized approach considered in earlier years when subband coding was developing [16]. To help improve time localization, higher order lters are used in the rst stage followed by lters of decreasing order employed in subsequent stages of the tree [12], [16]. Shown in the second to last columns of Table VII, denoted s, are results of the coding system that employs progressively shorter lters in the decomposition, specically the lters for decomposition levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, respectively. Compared with constant lter length results, one generally observes improved performance. Thus, there are gains that can be realized both in terms of performance and complexity achievable by optimizing the analysis lter orders as a function of stage level, the specics of which are dependent on the image being coded. Overall, however, when considering performance and complexity, the new Hybrid1 and Hybrid2 lters can be an attractive alternative to the 9/7 lters since their performance is the same as the lters shown in Table VII, the subjective quality is comparable to the 9/7 lters, and the complexity is less. IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION In this paper, we have examined the image compression performance of biorthogonal and orthogonal lters, looking closely at the lter properties associated with these performance differences. We have shown that the higher performance of biorthogonal lters over orthogonal lters with the same number of vanishing moments may be attributed in large measure to the stronger attenuation of high-pass channel aliasing energy. In the construction of the biorthogonal lters (such as the 9/7 and 5/3), this is achieved by choosing factors from the product lter such that the high-pass lter stopband attenuation is effectively enhanced, as described earlier in this paper. The side effect of this kind of root selection is that it enhances the passband deviation in the analysis low-pass lter. Although small deviations in the magnitude characteristics tend to have only small impact on performance, the degree of degradation is directly related to the degree of deviation. Furthermore, these deviations can become compounded as successive levels of decomposition are performed. Exploiting the additional latitude provided by the general reconstruction condition embodied in (2), hybrid FIRIIR anal-

ysissynthesis lters were introduced. These new analysis lters are not constrained by the limits of the product lter factorization, nor do they employ spectral factorization, and thus the low-pass lter passband characteristics can be made to have a desirable maximally at behavior. This improved characteristic helps minimize the compounding effects when successive levels of decomposition are performed in the dyadic decomposition. Two hybrid lters were presented in particular. The Hybrid1 has a low-complexity analysis lter implementation. The synthesis lter implementation is low-order recursive and computationally efcient. Its disadvantage, however, is that the lter phase is nonlinear. While it was shown that the associated degradation due to phase was small, it was signicant. This motivated the design of the Hybrid2 lters, which are linear phase. Like before, both the analysis and synthesis lters can also be implemented efciently. The Hybrid2 synthesis lters involve a higher order recursion relative to the Hybrid1 lters, but the poles involved have a rapid rate of decay. It was noted that this allows the synthesis lters to be approximated with high accuracy by their truncated impulse responses, resulting in an FIR system. The subjective quality associated with the coded images is typically consistent with the PSNR results. It should also be noted that there is performance variation among natural images. Some images that contain high spatial detail often favor the use of lters with good time localization (i.e., short lters). For these cases, the 5/3 lters and the Hybrid1 lters can deliver quality improvements. Similarly, there are many images that favor the use of longer lters. When one considers the full range of natural images, the Hybrid2 lters are attractive in terms of accommodating these variations while providing a computationally efcient implementation. In this regard, they are an attractive alternative to the popular 5/3 and 9/7 lters. Finally, it was shown that the new design approach could be extended to consider lters of longer length (or order ). Moreover, it was shown that the lter order could be extended indenitely, and that there was a knee in the performance curve that occurred generally at orders above that of the Hybrid1 and Hybrid2 lters. The performance for this class of higher order lters is consistently superior to the 9/7 biorthogonal lters. Further gains were shown to be achievable by employing lters of decreasing order in the successive stages of the decomposition. REFERENCES
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Jianyu Lin (M96) received the B.S. degree in physics from Nanjing Normal University, Jiangsu, China, and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in physics (acoustics) from Michigan State University, East Lansing. His Ph.D. research was in the area of Psychoacoustics and Signal Processing. From August 1996 to January 1998, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park. From 1998 to 2003, he was engaged in teaching in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Singapore Polytechnic. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Research Scientist at Temasek Lab, National University of Singapore. During 20072011, he developed new research interests in the area of medical imaging at the Brain & Mind Research Institute, University of Sydney, Australia. He is now with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia. His current research interests include signal and image processing, image and video coding, and medical imaging.

Mark J. T. Smith (F95) received the B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, all in electrical engineering. He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1984 and later served as the Executive Assistant to the President of the Institute from 1997 until 2001. In January, 2003, he joined Purdue University as Head of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Presently he serves as Dean of the Graduate School and holds the Michael J. & Katherine R. Birck endowed professorship. He has authored many papers in the areas of speech and image processing, and is the coauthor of two introductory books: Introduction to Digital Signal Processing and Digital Filtering. He is also a coeditor of the book titled Wavelets and Subband Transforms: Design and Applications, and the coauthor of the textbook titled A Study Guide for Digital Image Processing Dr. Smith is a former IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in Signal Processing. He is a past Chairman of the IEEE Digital Signal Processing Technical Committee in the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), a former member of the SPS Board of Governors, a former member of the MIPS Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation, and a past president of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA). Currently he is a member of the IEEE Committee on Engineering Accreditation Activities (CEAA), a member of the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) Board, and member of the National Academies Board of Army Science and Technology.