With the new LuraWave.jp2 GEO Edition, Algo Vision LuraTech, a developer of compression solutions for digital images and documents as well as JPEG2000 implementations, presented a new version of the JPEG2000 compression tool LuraWave.jp2 which is specially tailored to the requirements of the GIS sector. Developers and users of geo information systems now have access to a program for the compression of aerial and satellite images in the JPEG2000 format. The GEO Edition was developed in close collaboration with the EUSC (European Union Satellite Center), which has integrated the software in its SIGMA Viewer.
Until now, proprietary image data compression formats such as ER Mapper/ECW and MrSID were widely utilized for effective work with very large georeferenced raster images in the GIS market. However, more and more companies are using the ISO standardized JPEG2000 format. This development has been confirmed by leading GIS providers such as ESRI and Intergraph Solutions, USA, which have recently started to offer the JPEG2000 standard in their system solutions. Algo Vision LuraTech also supports this trend. With the new LuraWave.jp2 GEO Edition, the Berlin firm now provides all GIS developers and users with a program that enables the compression of aerial and satellite images in JPEG2000 format.
This means a decisive optimization in the handling of geo image data, as the GEO Edition offers all the advantages of JPEG2000: highest image quality with very small file sizes, and even faster internet data transfer times together with minimized archiving-storage space requirements. The wavelet-based compression standard allows a lossless or high level of file compression, as desired (e.g. lossy by fixed size or fixed quality). Moreover, with JPEG2000, the decoding of various resolution levels from a single data stream is possible. Because of this, with JPEG2000 – in contrast to the industry standard format GeoTIFF – the setting of various images or resolutions within the file (pyramid structure) is no longer necessary. At the same time, redundancies are prevented.
Additionally, the new LuraWave.jp2 GEO Edition offers important extra performance features. For example, the possibility to process large-format aerial and satellite images, the data volume of which often encompasses hundreds of MB – or even GB. Furthermore, the “Region Decoding” function allows as many image details as desired to be compressed with optimized performance and minimal storage requirements. This is accomplished without the need to create tiles during compression, which segment the image into uniform sections. Combined with the reconstruction of the image at lower resolution levels, this feature is useful when a faster access to smaller image components is required.
The JPEG2000 standard has been expanded to include the GML format (Geography Markup Language) defined by the OGC (OpenGis Consortium). This means that aerial images containing GML information, are now 100% JPEG2000-compatible. After compression with the LuraWave.jp2 C-SDK GEO Edition, the geographical metadata coded in XML can also be used further in the internet.
