Patent ID: 7454074

Claim:
A system for lossless progressive streaming of images over a communication network, comprising: an image storage device for storing a digital image; a client computer coupled to the communication network, wherein said client computer generates and transmits across said communication network a request list containing the coordinates of data blocks required for rendering a region of interest (ROI) within said digital image, wherein said request list is ordered in accordance with a selected progressive mode; a server computer coupled to said communication network and said image storage device, said server computer adapted to perform the steps of: preprocessing said digital image through a low pass filter and a lossless wavelet transformation; receiving said request list from said client computer; progressively transmitting to said client computer data blocks corresponding to said region of interest in the order they were requested; wherein said lossless wavelet transform comprises the steps of: first applying an X-direction wavelet transform to the output of said low pass filter to yield a temporal matrix therefrom; second applying a low Y-direction wavelet transform to a low portion of said temporal matrix to yield LL and LH subband coefficients; and third applying a high Y-direction wavelet transform to a high portion of said temporal matrix to yield HL and HH subband coefficients including a half-bit matrix containing half-bits, each half-bit corresponding to an HH subband coefficient.