Abstract. When compared to the traditional row-column wavelet trans-form, the line-based wavelet transform can achieve significant memory savings. However, the design of an image codec using the line-based wavelet transform is an intricate task because of the irregular order in which the wavelet coefficients are generated. The independent block cod-ing feature of JPEG2000 makes it work effectively with the line-based wavelet transform. However, with wavelet tree-based image codecs, such as set partitioning in hierarchical trees, the memory usage of the codecs does not realize significant advantage with the line-based wavelet trans-form because many wavelet coefficients must be buffered before the cod-ing starts. In this paper, the line-based wavelet transform was utilized to facilitate backward coding of wavelet trees (BCWT). Although the BCWT algorithm is a wavelet tree-based algorithm, its coding order differs from that of the traditional wavelet tree-based algorithms, which allows the pro-posed line-based image codec to become more memory efficient than other line-based image codecs, including line-based JPEG2000, while still offering comparable rate distortion performance and much lower system complexity. C © 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.3541802] Subject terms: image compression; line-based wavelet transforms; JPEG2000; wavelet trees. Paper 100746R received Sep. 12, 2010; revised manuscript received Dec. 9, 2010; accepted for publication Dec. 22, 2010; published online Feb. 14, 2011.