HTTP streaming of JPEG2000 images

Abstract

JPEG2000 is a new image compression standard. One of the goals of JPEG2000 is to support large images. Since even the compressed image file can be very big for large images, downloading the entire image can take a long time depending upon the user's connection speed. Thus, we propose to use streaming of JPEG2000 images. We use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for streaming. The use of HTTP to stream JPEG2000 images will ease its deployment. Thus, JPEG2000 images can be hosted by a Web server and can be streamed to the client helper application. The solution is scalable, so client devices with different capabilities, a variety of screen resolutions, and heterogeneous bandwidths can all achieve a scalable viewing of the same content stored in a single file. It is also possible to stream only selected regions of the image at a particular resolution and decode this partial stream and display it at the client. Thus, the proposed approach can handle resolution, quality and region of interest scalability feature of JPEG2000 images.