MULTI-RESOLUTION IMAGE DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD BASED ON TILED WAVELET-LIKE TRANSFORM AND SPARSE DATA CODING

An image process system tiles an image data array, processing the tiles in a predefined order. Each tile of image data is processed by applying a predefined family of transform layers to the tile of image data so as to generate successive sets of transform coefficients. Each set of transform coefficients include edge coefficients positioned at outside boundaries of the set of transform coefficients and non-edge coefficients positioned at interior locations of the set of transform coefficients. The sets of transform coefficients include a last set of transform coefficients, produced by the last transform layer, and one or more earlier sets of transform coefficients. The transform filters used include a short edge transform filter that is applied to image data at boundaries of the tile and to coefficients positioned at and near boundaries of each of the earlier sets of transform coefficients so as to generate the edge coefficients, and a long interior filter that is applied to image data at interior locations of the tile and to coefficients at interior locations of the earlier sets of transform coefficients so as to generate the non-edge coefficients. The edge transform filter has a shorter filter support than the interior transform filter, and both the edge transform filter and the interior transform filter are applied only to image data within the tile and only to transform coefficients within the earlier sets of transform.