Nonlinear wavelet transforms for image coding via lifting.

We investigate central issues such as invertibility, stability, synchronization, and frequency characteristics for nonlinear wavelet transforms built using the lifting framework. The nonlinearity comes from adaptively choosing between a class of linear predictors within the lifting framework. We also describe how earlier families of nonlinear filter banks can be extended through the use of prediction functions operating on a causal neighborhood of pixels. Preliminary compression results for model and real-world images demonstrate the promise of our techniques.