Patent ID: 8620097

Claim:
An image coding method, comprising: dividing a picture into tiles; coding the tiles to generate pieces of coded data each of which corresponds to a different one of the tiles; and generating a bitstream including the pieces of coded data, wherein the coding of the tiles includes: generating a first code string by coding a first tile which is one of the tiles with reference to coding information of an already-coded tile neighboring the first tile when a boundary between the first tile and the already-coded tile is a first boundary, and coding the first tile without referring to the coding information of the already-coded tile when the boundary between the first tile and the already-coded tile is a second boundary; and adding a bit string after the first code string to make a bit length of first coded data which is one of the pieces of coded data, a multiple of a predetermined N bits, N being an integer greater than or equal to 2, and wherein in the generating of the bitstream, the bitstream including tile boundary independence information is generated, the tile boundary independence information indicating whether each of boundaries between the tiles is one of the first boundary and the second boundary.