JPEG2000 and GeoJP2™

JPEG2000 is a new ISO specification (ISO/IEC 15444) for a wavelet based lossy compressed format for storing images. It is intended to supercede traditional JPEG format for many applications, providing better compression and a more flexible imaging model. This site is intended to act as a focus for geospatial application of JPEG2000 format.

GeoJP2™

GeoJP2™ is a format extension to JPEG2000 for embedding coordinate system and georeferencing information in a JPEG2000 JP2 format file. GeoJP2™ format was developed by Mapping Science, Inc. and is available for all to use subject to the following license:

Permission to use, copy, distribute, and sell software employing this trademark, documentation and format for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, in perpetuity, provided that (i) the above copyright notice is displayed during execution of any software utilizing this information, (ii) both the copyright notice and and this permission notice appear in all documents utilizing or disseminating this information, (iii) the name "Mapping Science, Inc." may not be used in any advertising or publicity relating to the software without the specific, prior written permission of Mapping Science, Inc., and (iv) agreement to the terms of this license is recorded at http://www.mappingscience.com/royaltyfreelicense.

The GeoJP2™ format is essentially a degenerate GeoTIFF file (with no image data) embedded in a UUID box in the JPEG2000 file to provide coordinate system information and a mapping between pixel coordinates and georeferenced coordinates.

More info from: http://www.jpeg.org/JPEG2000.html

JPEG 2000 is a new image coding system that uses state-of-the-art compression techniques based on wavelet technology. Its architecture should lend itself to a wide range of uses from portable digital cameras through to advanced pre-press, medical imaging and other key sectors.