This is nothing less than a totally essential reference for engineers and researchers in any field of work that involves the use of compressed imagery. Beginning with a thorough and up-to-date overview of the fundamentals of image compression, the authors move on to provide a complete description of the JPEG2000 standard. They then devote space to the implementation and exploitation of the JPEG2000 standard, with guidelines, suggestions, and analyses for both software and hardware oriented applications. The final section describes other key image compression standards, namely JPEG and JPEG-LS. This work has specific applications for those involved in the development of software and hardware solutions for multimedia, internet, and medical imaging applications, and for those pursuing research in image and video compression.