An optimized implementation of the JPEG-LS standard

An optimized implementation of the JPEG-LS standard for loss less and near loss less image compression. JPEG-LS is a low-complexity standard that matches JPEG 2000 compression ratios. In terms of speed, CharLS outperforms open source and commercial JPEG LS implementations. JPEG-LS (ISO-14495-1/ITU-T.87) is a standard derived from the Hewlett Packard LOCO algorithm. JPEG LS has low complexity (meaning fast compression) and high compression ratios, similar to JPEG 2000. JPEG-LS is more similar to the old loss less JPEG than to JPEG 2000, but interestingly the two different techniques result in vastly different performance characteristics.