A Region-Based Representation of Images in MARS

We study the problem of representing images within a multimedia Database Management System (DBMS), in order to support fast retrieval operations without compromising storage efficiency. To achieve this goal, we propose new image coding techniques which combine a wavelet representation, embedded coding of the wavelet coefficients, and segmentation of image-domain regions in the wavelet domain. A bitstream is generated in which each image region is encoded independently of other regions, without having to explicitly store information describing the regions. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithms achieve coding performance which compares favorably, both perceptually and objectively, to that achieved using state-of-the-art image/video coding techniques while additionally providing region-based support.