Robust CCSDS Image Data to JPEG2K Transcoding

Images from space satellites are often compressed in a lossy manner to ease transmission requirements such as power, error-rate, and data stream size. These requirements differ from standard computer image processing requirements since storage space, processing speed, and power constraints differ between PCs and satellites. To facilitate use of satellite images in applications such as image analysis, dissemination, storage and retrieval, etc., a method is needed to convert images to a widely supported format. Since lossy formats lose information, too many transcodings, poorly performed transcodings, or transcodings between poorly chosen formats will degrade image quality, sometimes making them useless. Images such as military photos and deep space objects require high quality, so it is desirable to avoid or minimize loss during transcodings. NASA has requested software transcoding from the CSSDS Image Data Compression recommendation to JPEG2000 (J2K) with minimal image degradation. In Phase I Cybernet demonstrated mathematically that the wavelets used in the CCSDS format can easily, quickly, and accurately be transformed to the JPEG2000 format. This mathematical proof was implemented in a GUI software tool. For this Phase II proposal, Cybernet Systems Corporation will create a robust, end-to-end solution for transcoding CCSDS images to widely supported formats for dissemination, using mathematical techniques developed during the Phase I. This will be done in four stages. First we will evaluate or implement production level CCSDS, in order to provide users with an easy to integrate, small, fast implementation of this image compression standard. Second, we will create a toolset for optimal conversion to other image formats, including J2K, minimizing transcoding error. Thirdly, since J2K allows a lot of choice for encoding, we will create an optimal J2K encoder tailored for CCSDS images. Finally, we will integrate these toolsets into existing systems as needed.