Robust CCSDS Image Data to JPEG2K Transcoding, Phase I

Images from space satellites, whether deep space or planetary, are often compressed in a lossy manner to ease transmission requirements such as power, error-rate, and data stream size. These requirements differ from standard computer image processing requirements since storage space, processing speed, and power constraints differ between PCs and satellites. To facilitate use of satellite images in other applications such as data dissemination, image analysis, image storage and retrieval, etc., a method is needed to convert satellite images to a more widely supported format. However, since many formats lose information ("lossy" compression), too many transcodings, poorly performed transcodings, or transcodings between poorly chosen formats will degrade image quality, sometimes making them useless. Images such as military photos and deep space objects require high quality, so it is desirable to avoid or minimize loss during transcodings. NASA has requested software transcoding from the CSSDS Image Data Compression recommendation to JPEG2000 with minimal image degradation. This proposal shows how Cybernet will approach this conversion, obtaining a minimal or zero loss in image fidelity, through mathematical analysis and careful software construction. This will be shown to be possible due to the specific wavelet compression techniques used in the two formats.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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