Patent ID: 7020342

Claim:
A method of coding ( 2 ) a signal (S) comprising blocks of values to obtain a scalable bit-stream (O,BS), the method comprising the steps of: representing ( 20 ) each block as a sequence of bit planes (BP), wherein most significant bits of the values form a most significant bit plane (BP MSB ) and respective less significant bits of the values form respective less significant bit planes; and scanning and transmitting ( 21 , 23 ) significant coefficients values in an order of decreasing bit plane (BP) significance; wherein for each bit plane the step of scanning and transmitting ( 21 , 23 ) is performed in a rectangular scan zone (R MAX , C MAX ) starting from a corner of the block, wherein R MAX represents a maximum row number and C MAX represents a maximum column number determined as the outermost positions of newly significant coefficients within each bit plane and said R MAX and C MAX values are transmitted in said bit-stream.