tiled into a number of blocks the method then embed bitplane encodes each block to visually lossless point afterwards each encoded block is terminated at a bitplane that minimizes image distortion based on determined distortion measures and a desired total of determined block rates finally the method concatenates the said terminated encoded blocks to form the coded representation application_number US 43002899 A description where reference is made in any one or more of the accompanying drawings to steps and or features which have the same reference numerals those steps and or features have for the purposes of this description the same function s or operation s unless the contrary intention appears the preferred embodiment proceeds initially by means of a wavelet transform of image data a description of the wavelet transform process is given in many standard texts and in particular the book u201c wavelets for computer graphics u201d by i stollinitz et al published in 1996 by morgan kaufmann publishers inc an overview of the wavelet process will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings referring initially to fig1 an original image 1 is transformed utilising a discrete wavelet transform dwt into four sub images 3 6 the sub images or subbands are normally denoted ll 1 hl 1 lh 1 and hh 1 the one suffix on the subband.