Ist Author et al.

, International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 3 (4),
March - 2013, pp. 1-6

A Lifting based DWT Scheme for Image Compression using

VHDL
Dr. Vandana B Malode
Dept. Electronics & telecommunication
Jawaharlal Nehru College of engineering
Aurangabad, India

Mrs. Nayna Vijayakumar Bhosale

Karthikeynan.G

Dept. Electronics & telecommunication

Jawaharlal Nehru College of engineering
Aurangabad, India

Dept. Computer Science

JNT University
Hyderabad, India

vanada.malode@gmail.com

nayna.bhosale@yahoo.cominominds@gmail.com

Abstract Image Compression is a major image processing technique widely used in diverse applications. Discrete
wavelet transforms is the most popular transformation technique adopted for image compression . This paper presents
the design and implementation of a Lifting based DWT scheme for an Efficient Image Compression method. This
Lifting based DWT scheme is implemented using VHDL and the pre-processing of image such as resizing, colour
conversion and pixel conversion are done using MATLAB. The paper avoids the conventional method of complex
mathematical calculation and the construction is derived in spatial domain. Our proposed method will be giving
higher compression rate and peak to signal noise ratio.
Keywords Image Compression, Lifting, DWT, FPGA
I. INTRODUCTION
Implementation of Image Processing algorithm using VLSI Technology has gained popularity for the last 2 decades.
Applications like xray imaging, satellite, remote sensing, bio-medical scanning were the few areas to mention where
these two domains of engineering come in contact. As computer and computing device like smart phones, tablets have
been increasingly used in the recent years, the necessary to use digital images have made consumers irresistible. Image
compression plays a vital role in teleconferencing, video conferencing, remote sensing, medical imaging, magnetic
resonance imaging and so much more. All these modern day equipments come with user friendly interfaces like the
graphical displays, touch screens and keypads. Images stored in smaller handheld devices are a challenge as they occupy
huge storage space, and require more bandwidth for its transmission. Therefore most of the signal processing
technologies today has dedicated hardware which acts as the co-processing system for compressing and decompressing.
These modern day requirements cannot be made possible with the conventional compression techniques like the Fourier
Transform (FT), Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Whereas the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) serves our
requirement effectively and efficiently. The basic idea behind our compression technique is to employ the Lifting
method. The Lifting Scheme is a technique for both designing wavelets and performing the Discrete Wavelet Transform
(DWT). The initial pre-processing of the images were done using Matlab and the algorithmic implementation of the
compression for DWT and IDWT is done using VHDL.
II.

LITERATURE SURVEY

As we have seen earlier a wide range of image compression techniques and methods have been used in the
conventional times and even in the recent past years. The general image compression methods could be classified into
lossless and lossy compression. Fourier Transforms and Discrete Cosine Transform are used for compression. DCT was a
renowned technique for JPEG standard images. The usage of DCT results in distortion in the reconstructed images. They
addressed both colour and black and white images. The DCT method of image compression deals with the following
steps. A. Given image is broken into a matrix of pixels. B. DCT is applied in each of the blocks. C. Compression through
quantization. D. Store the compressed blocks which contains the image. E. Reconstruct Image using decompression
(IDCT) [4]. The DCT gives better result that the Fourier with good compression ratio (CR) and peak to signal noise ratio
(PSNR) [1]. But the DCT suffers loss in few application areas, not able to handle modern digital image and complex
images [6]. This forced us to look for a better and a competing compression technique which was found in the Discrete
Wavelet Transform (DWT).
III.

DWT IMPLEMENTATION

The basic idea behind the image compression is that in most of the images we find that their neighbouring pixels are
highly correlated and have redundant information. So there is a necessity to find a less correlated representation of the
image and it can be done by removing the redundancy and irrelevancy. Redundancy reduction removes duplication in
image and irrelevance omits the part of signal which cannot be identified by visual perception. Wavelet transform is used
for signals or images soothing, keeping in mind of the energy compaction properties, for instance large value tends to
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Ist Author et al., International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 3 (4),
March - 2013, pp. 1-6
become larges and the small values smaller, when it is applied with wavelet transform. Here the Original image is
divided into frequency resolution and time resolution constants. The decomposition of the images are shown in the below
figure. The Discrete Wavelet Transform, which is based on sub-band coding, is found to yield a fast computation of
Wavelet Transform. It is easy to implement and reduces the computation time and resources required. The discrete
wavelet transform uses filter banks for the construction of the multi-resolution time-frequency plane. The Discrete
Wavelet Transform analyses the signal at different frequency bands with different resolutions by decomposing the signal
into an approximation and detail information. The decomposition of the signal into different frequency bands obtained by
successive high pass g[n] and low pass h[n] filtering of the time domain signal. The combination of high pass g[n] and
low pass filter h[n] comprise a pair of analysing filters. The output of each filter contains half the frequency content, but
an equal amount of samples as the input signal. The two outputs together contain the same frequency content as the input
signal; however the amount of data is doubled.
Therefore down sampling by a factor two, denoted by 2, is applied to the outputs of the filters in the analysis bank.
the synthesis bank are based on the filters in the analysis bank. Proper choice of the combination of the analysing filters
and synthesizing filters will provide perfect reconstruction. Perfect reconstruction is defined by the output which is
generally an estimate of the input, being exactly equal to the input applied. The decomposition process can be iterated
with successive approximations being decomposed in return, so that one signal is broken down into many lower
resolution components. Decomposition can be performed as ones requirement. The Two-Dimensional DWT (2D-DWT)
is a multi level decomposition technique. It converts images from spatial domain to frequency domain. One-level of
wavelet decomposition produces four filtered and sub-sampled images, referred to as sub bands. The sub band image
decomposition using wavelet transform has a lot of advantages. Generally, it profits analysis for non-stationary image
signal and has high compression rate [2][7]. And its transform field is represented multi-resolution like human's visual
system so that can progressively transmit data in low transmission rate line. DWT processes data on a variable timefrequency plane that matches progressively the lower frequency components to coarser time resolutions and the highfrequency components to finer time resolutions, thus achieving a multi-resolution analysis [7]. The Discrete Wavelet
Transform has become powerful tool in a wide range of applications including image/video processing, numerical
analysis and telecommunication. The advantage of DWT over existing transforms, such as discrete Fourier transform
(DFT) and DCT, is that the DWT performs a multi-resolution analysis of a signal with localization in both time and
frequency domain.
The Lifting Scheme which we use is a technique used for both designing the wavelets and performing the
Discrete Wavelet Transform. When these steps are merged and design the wavelet filters while performing wavelet
transform, we term it as a second generation wavelet transform. The lifting scheme was introduced by Wim Sweldens [9].
The generic DWT applies several filters separately to the same signal, where as in contrast to that, in the lifting scheme
the signal is dived like a zipper. Then a series of convolution accumulate operation across the divided signals are
applied.
A. Proposed Method
The compression using lifting technique is done using VHDL and Matlab as mentioned earlier. Initially the input
images are converted into a 8x8 matrix using a Matlab image function. The lifting scheme is a new algorithm proposed
for the implementation of the wavelet transforms. It can reduce the computational complexity of DWT involved with the
convolution implementation. Furthermore, the extra memory required to store the results of the convolution can also be
reduced by in place computation of the wavelet coefficient with the lifting scheme. Lifting wavelet transform as its
advantages over the ordinary wavelet transform by way of reduction in memory required for its implementation. The
basic principle of the lifting scheme is to factorize the poly phase matrix of a wavelet filter into a sequence of alternating
upper and lower triangular matrices and a diagonal matrix. This leads to the wavelet implementation by means of
banded-matrix multiplications. Let h(z) and g(z) be the low pass and high pass analysis filters, and let h (z) and g (z) be
the low pass and high pass synthesis filters. The two types of lifting schemes are shown in Figure 1, which corresponds to
the Factorization consists of three steps [8]. The flow chart of the proposed method is shown in Figure 3 & 4. Initially
the input image is converted into pixels and saved to a text file using the matlab function. Now by taking the text data as
input and by using the DWT Lifting Scheme the image compression is done, here the compression is done by VHDL.
Now once we run the test bench file in VHDL, this will generate the wavelet co-efficient such as the LL, LH, HL and HH
and saved in a text file. Now by using the generated co-efficient as input we can visualize the output using Matlab. Once
decompression is done, we will go for the decompression of the same image. This is also done in the same manner as the
above; only the IDWT Lifting Scheme is used here. Once we run the test bench for decompression, we will get the
retrieval in a separate text file. Now using this test file as the input, we can visualize the Original image using Matlab.

Predict step, where the even samples are multiplied by the time domain equivalent of t(z) and are
added to the odd samples,
Update step, where updated odd samples are multiplied, by the time domain equivalent of s(z) and are
added to the even samples,

2013, IJARCSSE All Rights Reserved

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Ist Author et al., International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 3 (4),
March - 2013, pp. 1-6
Scaling step, where the even samples are multiplied by 1/k and odd samples by k.

Fig 1. The 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform

Fig 2. Lifting Scheme Block Diagram

To perform the DWT, the architecture reads in the block of data, carries out the transform, and outputs the LH,
HL, and HH data at each level of decomposition. The LL data is used for the next level of decomposition. At the
end of the inverse Transform, the LL values of the next higher level are obtained. The transform values of the
three sub bands (LH, HL, and HH) are read in, and the DWT is carried out on the new data set.

Input
image
Pixel conversion
Apply DWT
Get coefficients

LL

LH

HL

HH

Compressed Image
Fig. 3 Compression Flow
2013, IJARCSSE All Rights Reserved

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Ist Author et al., International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 3 (4),
March - 2013, pp. 1-6

Compresse
d Image

Apply IDWT

Reconstruction

Original Image
Fig. 4 Decompression Flow
IV. CONCLUSIONS
We have applied the DWT Lifting scheme to 256x256 of 8 bit images. We used the cameraman and other images as
input. The figure of the input and output images were given above. The functional and the logical simulation were carried
out using the Xilinx ISE 10.1i. After the simulation the results are visualized using the Matlab.
V.

FUTURE SCOPE

The Project can be further enhanced to be implemented on a Xilinx Spartan 3e or 5 FPGA board. The project can be
designed and implemented through System C using Xilinx Embedded Development kit. We could use any color or
black and white image for implementing the 2D DWT scheme on the FPGA board.
VI. RESULTS
The input image file is actually processed for the VHDL input using Matlab. Once the DWT is applied we get our
compressed image on the LL co-efficient. For the decompression method, the reverse of the above is done. Where the
compressed image is given as the input file and IDWT is done using VHDL and the reconstruction is done, we can
visualize the original image output through Matlab.

Fig 5, 6. The Original image and the compressed image on the LL Band
2013, IJARCSSE All Rights Reserved

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Ist Author et al., International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering 3 (4),
March - 2013, pp. 1-6

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