Rate-distortion optimized adaptive scanning order for bitplane image coding engines

This paper introduces an adaptive scanning order for bitplane image coding engines, which is devised from a rate-distortion optimization perspective that uses recent advances in coefficient modeling and distortion estimation. The main idea is to always select the next coefficient to be coded so that image distortion and code stream length are minimized. The sequence of visited coefficients is adapted as more coefficients are coded without need to explicitly transmit order information. Experimental results suggest that the proposed scanning order produces a code stream in which nearly all bits lie on the convex hull of the operation rate-distortion function.