DIGITAL IMAGERY is pervasive in our world today. Consequently,standards for the efficient representation andinterchange of digital images are essential. To date, some ofthe most successful still image compression standards have resultedfrom the ongoing work of the Joint Photographic ExpertsGroup (JPEG). This group operates under the auspices of JointTechnical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1(JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1), a collaborative effort between the InternationalOrganization for Standardization (ISO) and InternationalTelecommunication Union Standardization Sector (ITUT).Both the JPEG [1–3] and JPEG-LS [4–6] standards wereborn from the work of the JPEG committee. For the last fewyears, the JPEG committee has been working towards the establishmentof a new standard known as JPEG 2000 (i.e., ISO/IEC15444). The fruits of these labors are now coming to bear, asJPEG-2000 Part 1 (i.e., ISO/IEC 15444-1 [7]) has recently beenapproved as a new international standard.