Welcome to JPEG

JPEG 2000 publishes two new parts, starts investigations for new projects

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is the working group of ISO, International Standard Organisation, who defined the popular JPEG Imaging Standard and more recently the JPEG 2000 family of Imaging Standards. This group convenes three times a year, in Europe, North America and Asia. At its meeting last week held from 8-12 December 2003, in Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA, 63 experts from 14 different countries convened to work on the latest technology on image coding systems in the JPEG Standard working group.

Announcement was made at that meeting that two parts of the JPEG 2000 Standard had been officially published by ISO :

- JPEG 2000 Part 5 (ISO/IEC 15444-5): Reference Software, and

- JPEG 2000 Part 6 (ISO/IEC 15444-6): Compound Image File Format.

"The two independently created software reference implementations contained in JPEG 2000 Part 5 will greatly assist implementers of JPEG 2000 in testing and understanding the features of this important imaging standard. The Compound Image File Format published in Part 6 will allow compound document applications to take advantage of the advanced features of the JPEG 2000 image coding technology", said Dr. Daniel Lee of Yahoo! Inc. and Convener of the JPEG Committee (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1).

A new call for technology was issued:

- Advanced Image Coding (AIC): The objective of the project is to assess the functionalities of current JPEG 2000 algorithm such as its compression efficiency, scalability relative to the other state-of-the-art image coding technology. It is expected this project will form the basis for the next generation image coding standards.

- Still Image Search (SIS): The JPEG 2000 standard provides a rich set of capabilities for digital imaging applications, it is important that the JPEG 2000 features are effectively applied to enable breakthroughs in the image search problem. Standardized solutions are needed so that JPEG 2000 images can be indexed and search in the most efficient way. Specific features provided by JPEG 2000 such as image metadata, image security, image interactivity form the necessary components for building an effective image search engine. Useful technologies from related standards such as MPEG-7 will be taken into consideration in this project.

- Image Based Authentication (IBA): The goal of this activity is to provide standard specifications such that features provided by JPEG 2000 images can be standardized and applied to the authentication protocol in an Image Based Authentication system.

To facilitate adoption of the new standard, a new JPEG 2000 Part 13 is now proposed to define an "Entry level JPEG 2000 Encoder", which is expected to be royalty free and license-fee free.

Information dissemination by the JPEG community is an important activity for the committee. A new sponsor based website which will bring a lot more information to the public and to developers will come online next year. Already eight JPEG participants have agreed to become major sponsors of the new web site, which will have sections devoted to explaining the JPEG and JBIG standards, presentations of the sponsors' activity related to JPEG, special sections on applications and solutions, and hierarchies of Frequently Asked Questions concerning the JPEG family of imaging standards.

The next meeting, the 32^nd JPEG Meeting will take place in Madrid, Spain, March 29-April 2, 2004.