Traditional facsimile services are based on fairly low resolution monochrome images, operating at relatively low bit rates over modems.  Increasingly, these are looking out of place as the technology used in printing and scanning improves, colour becomes the norm in the workplace, and most busineses have access to higher bandwidth TCP/IP networking.  A new range of standardised services can soon be expected which are closely linked to the needs of document imaging and archiving systems as well as simple point to point communications.

An efficient way to handle these requirements is to use a  hybrid coding scheme in which each type of text on a page can be compressed optimally using a wide variety of coding schemes. ITU-T Study Group 16 (responsible for facsimile) have defined (in their Recommendation T.44) 'Mixed Raster Coding' in which a page can be split into different regions, each with its own compression type.  Because of the close liaison between the JPEG and JBIG committees and ITU-T, original JPEG (IS 10918-1), JPEG-LS (IS 14495-1) and JPEG 2000 (IS 15444), as well as JBIG (IS 11544) and JBIG2 (IS 14492) can all be used as valid compression types, as well as existing fax and other formats.  There are close links between this work and the standards and recommendations produced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

One specific development within the JPEG 2000 set of standards is the 'JPM' Compound Image File Format defined in Part 6 of the JPEG 2000 standard.  This extension to the basic JPEG 2000 file format (defined in parts 1 and 2 of the Standard) adds in the concepts and syntax necessary to handle compound documents coded in MRC format.  This provides the facsimile marketplace with a standardised approach for storing received information, and for exporting it usefully into document imaging and archiving systems.

For more information contact:

Rob Buckley, Xerox Corporation
or
Lou Sharpe, Picture Elements Inc