About Antonio Pinheiro

Antonio Pinheiro received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the I.S.T. University of Lisbon, Portugal, in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Systems Engineering from University of Essex in 2002. Since 1988 he is a lecture at University da Beira Interior (UBI), Portugal. His current research interests are on image processing and computer vision domains, including Multimedia Quality, Multimedia Privacy, and also on Image Classification and Medical Image Analysis. He is the Communication chair and a Portuguese committee member of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1 (JPEG). He has been Portuguese representative of the European COST Actions 292 and IC1003 -€“ Qualinet, and currently he is Portuguese representative of IC1206, DE-ID - De-identification for privacy protection in multimedia content and BM1304, MYO-MRI - Applications of MR imaging and spectroscopy techniques in neuromuscular disease.

JPEG Column: 75th JPEG Meeting in Sydney, Australia

The 75th JPEG meeting was held at National Standards Australia in Sydney, Australia, from 26 to 31 March. Multiples activities have been ensued, pursuing the development of new standards that meet the current requirements and challenges on imaging technology. JPEG is continuously trying to provide new reliable solutions for different image applications. The 75th JPEG meeting featured mainly the following highlights:

  • JPEG issues a Call for Proposals on Privacy & Security;Image may contain: 3 people, people sitting, screen and indoor
  • New draft Call for Proposal for a Part 15 of JPEG 2000 standard on High Throughput coding;
  • JPEG Pleno defines methodologies for proposals evaluation;
  • A test model for the upcoming JPEG XS standard was created;
  • A new standardisation effort on Next generation Image Formats was initiated.

In the following an overview of the main JPEG activities at the 75th meeting is given.

JPEG Privacy & Security – JPEG Privacy & Security is a work item (ISO/IEC 19566-4) aiming at developing a standard for providing technical solutions which can ensure privacy, maintaining data integrity, and protecting intellectual property rights (IPR). JPEG Privacy & Security is exploring ways on how to design and implement the necessary features without significantly impacting coding performance while ensuring scalability, interoperability, and forward & backward compatibility with current JPEG standard frameworks.
Since the JPEG committee intends to interact closely with actors in this domain, public workshops on JPEG Privacy & Security were organised in previous JPEG meetings. The first workshop was organized on October 13, 2015 during the JPEG meeting in Brussels, Belgium. The second workshop was organized on February 23, 2016 during the JPEG meeting in La Jolla, CA, USA. Following the great success of these workshops, a third and final workshop was organized on October 18, 2016 during the JPEG meeting in Chengdu, China. These workshops targeted on understanding industry, user, and policy needs in terms of technology and supported functionalities. The proceedings of these workshops are published on the Privacy and Security page of JPEG website at www.jpeg.org under Systems section.
The JPEG Committee released a Call for Proposals that invites contributions on adding new capabilities for protection and authenticity features for the JPEG family of standards. Interested parties and content providers are encouraged to participate in this standardization activity and submit proposals. The deadline for an expression of interest and submissions of proposals has been set to October 6th, 2017, as detailed in the Call for Proposals. The Call for Proposals on JPEG Privacy & Security is publicly available on the JPEG website, https://jpeg.org/jpegsystems/privacy_security.html.

High Throughput JPEG 2000 – The JPEG committee is working towards the creation of a new Part 15 to the JPEG 2000 suite of standards, known as High Throughput JPEG 2000 (HTJ2K). The goal of this project is to identify and standardize an alternate block coding algorithm that can be used as a drop-in replacement for the algorithm defined in JPEG 2000 Part-1. Based on existing evidence, it is believed that large increases in encoding and decoding throughput (e.g., 10X or beyond) should be possible on modern software platforms, subject to small sacrifices in coding efficiency. An important focus of this activity is inter-operability with existing systems and content repositories. In order to ensure this, the alternate block coding algorithm that will be the subject of this new Part of the standard should support mathematically lossless transcoding between HTJ2K and JPEG 2000 Part-1 codestreams at the code-block level. A draft Call for Proposals (CfP) on HTJ2K has been issued for public comment, and is available on JPEG web-site.

JPEG Pleno – The responses to the JPEG Pleno Call for Proposals on Light Field Coding will be evaluated at the July JPEG meeting in Torino. During JPEG 75th meetings has been defined the quality assessment procedure for this highly challenging type of large volume data. In addition to light fields, JPEG Pleno is also addressing point cloud and holographic data. Currently, the committee is undertaking in-depth studies to prepare standardization efforts on coding technologies for these image data types, encompassing the collection of use cases and requirements, but also investigations towards accurate and appropriate quality assessment procedures for associated representation and coding technologies. JPEG committee is probing for input from the involved industrial and academic communities.

JPEG XS – This project aims at the standardization of a visually lossless low-latency lightweight compression scheme that can be used as a mezzanine codec for the broadcast industry and Pro-AV markets. Targeted use cases are professional video links, IP transport, Ethernet transport, real-time video storage, video memory buffers, and omnidirectional video capture and rendering. After a Call for Proposal and the assessment of the submitted technologies, a test model for the upcoming JPEG XS standard was created and results of core experiments have been reviewed during the 75th JPEG meeting in Sydney. More core experiments are on their way to further improve the final standard: JPEG committee therefore invites interested parties – in particular coding experts, codec providers, system integrators and potential users of the foreseen solutions – to contribute to the further specification process.

Next generation Image Formats – The JPEG Committee is exploring a new activity, which aims to develop an image compression format that demonstrates higher compression efficiency at equivalent subjective quality of currently available formats, and that supports features for both low-end and high-end use cases.  On the low end, the new format addresses image-rich user interfaces and web pages over bandwidth-constrained connections. On the high end, it targets efficient compression for high-quality images, including high bit depth, wide color gamut and high dynamic range imagery.

Final Quote

“JPEG is committed to accommodate reliable and flexible security tools for JPEG file formats without compromising legacy usage of our standards said Prof. Touradj Ebrahimi, the Convener of the JPEG committee.

About JPEG

JPEG-signatureThe Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a Working Group of ISO/IEC, the International Organisation for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission, (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1) and of the Interna
tional Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG16), responsible for the popular JBIG, JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, JPSearch and more recently, the JPEG XT, JPEG XS, JPEG Systems and JPEG Pleno families of imaging standards.

The JPEG group meets nominally three times a year, in Europe, North America and Asia. The latest 75th    meeting was held on March 26-31, 2017, in Sydney, Australia. The next (76th) JPEG Meeting will be held on July 15-21, 2017, in Torino, Italy.

More information about JPEG and its work is available at www.jpeg.org or by contacting Antonio Pinheiro (pinheiro@ubi.pt) or Frederik Temmermans (ftemmerm@etrovub.be) of the JPEG Communication Subgroup.

If you would like to stay posted on JPEG activities, please subscribe to the jpeg-news mailing list on https://listserv.uni-stuttgart.de/mailman/listinfo/jpeg-news.  Moreover, you can follow JPEG twitter account on http://twitter.com/WG1JPEG.

Future JPEG meetings are planned as follows:

  • No. 76, Torino, IT, 17 – 21 July, 2017
  • No. 77, Macau, CN, 23 – 27 October 2017

JPEG Column: 74th JPEG Meeting

The 74th JPEG meeting was held at ITU Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, from 15 to 20 January featuring the following highlights:

  • A Final Call for Proposals on JPEG Pleno was issued focusing on light field coding;
  • Creation of a test model for the upcoming JPEG XS standard;
  • A draft Call for Proposals for JPEG Privacy & Security was issued;
  • JPEG AIC technical report finalized on Guidelines for image coding system evaluation;
  • An AHG was created to investigate the evidence of high throughput JPEG 2000;
  • An AHG on next generation image compression standard was initiated to explore a future image coding format with superior compression efficiency.

 

JPEG Pleno kicks off its activities towards JPEGmeeting74standardization of light field coding

At the 74th JPEG meeting in Geneva, Switzerland the final Call for Proposals (CfP) on JPEG Pleno was issued particularly focusing on light field coding. The CfP is available here.

The call encompasses coding technologies for lenslet light field cameras, and content produced by high-density arrays of cameras. In addition, system-level solutions associated with light field coding and processing technologies that have a normative impact are called for. In a later stage, calls for other modalities such as point cloud, holographic and omnidirectional data will be issued, encompassing image representations and new and rich forms of visual data beyond the traditional planar image representations.

JPEG Pleno intends to provide a standard framework to facilitate capture, representation and exchange of these omnidirectional, depth-enhanced, point cloud, light field, and holographic imaging modalities. It aims to define new tools for improved compression while providing advanced functionalities at the system level. Moreover, it targets to support data and metadata manipulation, editing, random access and interaction, protection of privacy and ownership rights as well as other security mechanisms.

 

JPEG XS aims at the standardization of a visually lossless low-latency lightweight compression scheme that can be used for a wide range of applications including mezzanine codec for the broadcast industry and Pro-AV markets. Targeted use cases are professional video links, IP transport, Ethernet transport, real-time video storage, video memory buffers, and omnidirectional video capture and rendering. After a Call for Proposal issued on March 11th 2016 and the assessment of the submitted technologies, a test model for the upcoming JPEG XS standard was created during the 73rd JPEG meeting in Chengdu and the results of a first set of core experiments have been reviewed during the 74th JPEG meeting in Geneva. More core experiments are on their way before finalizing the standard: JPEG committee therefore invites interested parties – in particular coding experts, codec providers, system integrators and potential users of the foreseen solutions – to contribute to the further specification process.

 

JPEG Privacy & Security aims at developing a standard for realizing secure image information sharing which is capable of ensuring privacy, maintaining data integrity, and protecting intellectual property rights (IPR). JPEG Privacy & Security will explore ways on how to design and implement the necessary features without significantly impacting coding performance while ensuring scalability, interoperability, and forward and backward compatibility with current JPEG standard frameworks.

A draft Call for Proposals for JPEG Privacy & Security has been issued and the JPEG committee invites interested parties to contribute to this standardisation activity in JPEG Systems. The draft of CfP is available here.

The call addresses protection mechanisms and technologies such as handling hierarchical levels of access and multiple protection levels for metadata and image protection, checking integrity of image data and embedded metadata, and supporting backward and forward compatibility with JPEG coding technologies. Interested parties are encouraged to subscribe to the JPEG Privacy & Security email reflector for collecting more information. A final version of the JPEG Privacy & Security Call for Proposals is expected at the 75th JPEG meeting located in Sydney, Australia.

 

JPEG AIC provides guidance and standard procedures for advanced image coding evaluation.  At this meeting JPEG completed a technical report: TR 29170-1 Guidelines for image coding system evaluation. This report is a compendium of JPEGs best practices in evaluation that draws sources from several different international standards and international recommendations. The report discusses use of objective tools, subjective procedures and computational analysis techniques and when to use the different tools. Some of the techniques are tried and true tools familiar to image compression experts and vision scientists. Several tools represent new fields where few tools have been available, such as the evaluation of coding systems for high dynamic range content.

 

High throughput JPEG 2000

The JPEG committee started a new activity for high throughput JPEG 2000 and an AHG was created to investigate the evidence for such kind of standard. Experts are invited to participate in this expert group and to join the mailing list.

 

Final Quote

“JPEG continues to offer standards that redefine imaging products and services contributing to a better society without borders.” said Prof. Touradj Ebrahimi, the Convener of the JPEG committee.

 

About JPEG

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a Working Group JPEG-signatureof ISO/IEC, the International Organisation for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission, (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1) and of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG16), responsible for the popular JBIG, JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, JPSearch and more recently, the JPEG XT, JPEG XS and JPEG Systems and JPEG PLENO families of imaging standards.

More information about JPEG and its work is available at www.jpeg.org or by contacting Antonio Pinheiro and Tim Bruylants of the JPEG Communication Subgroup at pr@jpeg.org.

If you would like to stay posted on JPEG activities, please subscribe to the jpeg-news mailing list on https://listserv.uni-stuttgart.de/mailman/listinfo/jpeg-news.   Moreover, you can follow JPEG twitter account on http://twitter.com/WG1JPEG.

 

Future JPEG meetings are planned as follows:

  • No. 75, Sydney, AU, 26 – 31 March, 2017
  • No. 76, Torino, IT, 17 – 21 July, 2017
  • No. 77, Macau, CN, 23 – 27 October 2017