The University of British Columbia (UBC) and Image Power Inc., both located in Vancouver, B.C., will jointly produce a new wavelet color codec compliant with Part 1 of the JPEG2000 working committee draft (CD). They also will team up to develop other technologies relating to bi-tonal and color still-image compression.
Once the codec is completed, UBC will conduct interoperability testing with a variety of organizations. These include Canon, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, and Arizona State Univ. This process will help assure the device's easy integration into Image Power's existing image-communication products. Product shipment should begin during the first quarter of this year.
Such a development is a logical step. The two institutions already have substantially contributed to various components of the emerging JPEG2000 standard, including wavelet filtering, quantization, and error resilience—a critical component for mobile applications. This newest version will now offer improved image quality over a richer scale of content. It promises to meet the need for multimedia and still-image compression over various networks, such as the Internet and industrial and consumer applications. Also, JPEG2000 is targeted at consumer applications like printers, cameras, fax machines, mobile (wireless) transmission products, and e-commerce.
For more information, go to www.imagepower.com.