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In recent years, there has been an explosive increase in the amount of digital image data. The requirements for its storage and communication can be facilitated considerably by compressing the data while maintaining their visual quality. This book starts with delineating the basic features of a digital image followed by a literature review of existing compression methods and their algorithms. After discussing the fundamentals of wavelet theory and wavelet transform, a set of wavelet functions or wavelets are examined for improving the level of compression on different types of images having different spectral activities. The outputs from different Wavelet Transforms are compared among themselves as well as with outputs of other compression techniques, viz. Discrete Cosine Transform. Our results provide a good reference for the establishment of Wavelet Transform as a strong candidate for image compression. This book is particularly useful for the academicians and researchers for easy understanding of subject matter and as an aid to digital signal processing, image compression, multimedia processing and related fields.

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