[Abstract] An image decoding method, comprising: decoding a coded signal to generate quantization coefficients and pieces of management information, the quantization coefficients each corresponding to a corresponding one of 5 transform units, and the pieces of the management information indicating a structure of the transform units; performing inverse quantization and inverse transform on each of the quantization coefficients, eventually generating prediction error signals of the respective transform units; and adding at least one of the prediction error signals to a prediction signal for 10 each of coding units each including the transform units, generating decoded signals for each of the coding units, wherein the quantization coefficients and the pieces of the management information have a tree structure, each of the transform units corresponds to a corresponding one of leaf nodes in the tree structure, and the decoding includes decoding, for each of the leaf 15 nodes, a coded piece of the management information and a coded quantization coefficient which are arranged in succession in the coded signal for the each of the leaf nodes, wherein the pieces of the management information include respective pieces of split information each of which corresponds to a corresponding one of nodes in the tree structure and 20 indicates whether or not a transform unit corresponding to the corresponding one of the nodes is to be further split, wherein the pieces of the management information include respective first flags each of which corresponds to at least one of the nodes in the tree structure and indicates whether or not a quantization coefficient corresponding to each of the at 25 least one of the nodes exists, wherein each of the quantization coefficients includes a luminance quantization coefficient and a chrominance quantization coefficient, and the first flag includes a second flag and a third flag, the second flag indicating whether or not the luminance quantization coefficient exists, and the third flag indicating whether or not the 30 chrominance quantization coefficient exists, in the coded signal, the second flag that is coded is arranged after the third flag that is coded, wherein in the decoding, the second flag that is coded is decoded after decoding the third flag that is coded, for each of the at least one of the nodes. Q)00 r4r ru 0 (D N L3/4>
Image coding method, image decoding method, image coding apparatus, image decoding apparatus, and image coding and decoding apparatus