Third- and Fourth-Year Undergraduate Design Projects (ELEC 399, CENG 499, ELEC 499, CENG 499, and SENG 499)

I am willing to supervise projects in any of the following areas:

Students are encouraged to propose their own projects. Some examples of possible projects are given below. Please contact me for more details.

High-Performance Feature-Rich Image/Video Compression Systems

Digital image and video data are pervasive in our world today. Consequently, the storage and transmission of such data are frequently required. For this purpose, efficient representations of image/video data are essential, and such representations are obtained by employing compression techniques. This project will study various aspects of image/video compression systems. For example, such work might entail one of the following:

  1. Design and implement a simple wavelet-based image compression system from scratch.
  2. Carry out an extensive performance analysis of an existing image compression system (e.g., through code execution profiling), and use the results of this analysis in order to substantially improve the performance of the system.
  3. Develop a client-server protocol for the efficient exchange of image data over a network, and then implement this protocol in order to demonstrate its usefulness.
The above work items are only meant to serve as examples. The student is encouraged to propose their own project definition in consultation with the project supervisor. By undertaking this project, the student will gain a better understanding of the many issues faced when developing image/video compression systems.

JPEG 2000: A New International Standard for Image/Video Compression

JPEG 2000 is a new multi-part international standard for image/video compression. This standard represents the state of the art in compression methods and is based on wavelet/subband coding techniques. Of most relevance here are Parts 1, 3, and 5 of the standard. Part 1 of the standard specifies the baseline coding system (i.e., the minimal functionality JPEG-2000 system). Part 3 defines extensions to the baseline system for the application of intra-frame style video compression. Lastly, Part 5 contains two reference implementations of the Part-1 codec, one of which is provided by the JasPer software (http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper). This project is to explore various aspects of the JPEG-2000 codec by working with the particular JPEG-2000 implementation included in the JasPer software. Such work might include one or more of the following items:

  1. adding new functionality to the software,
  2. characterizing and improving the performance of the existing code,
  3. porting the code to an embedded DSP platform,
  4. adapting the code for use in a novel application.
The preceding list, however, is not by any means intended to be exhaustive. Other possible work items may be proposed by the student. By undertaking this project, the student can hope to gain an in-depth understanding of image/video compression techniques, the JPEG-2000 standard, and efficient implementation techniques for JPEG 2000.