The need to efficiently store, manipulate, and transmit large masses of information is growing more rapidly than the capacity of systems to handle it. Engineers and computer scientists need a solid understanding of compression in order to work with the burgeoning variety of data types and increasingly data-intensive applications. This uniquely comprehensive book explains the fundamental theories and techniques of data compression, with the most complete coverage available of both lossy and lossless methods. Rather than simply describing current approaches, Sayood explains the theoretical underpinnings of the algorithms so that readers learn how to model structures in data and design compression packages of their own. Practitioners, researchers, and students will benefit from the balanced presentation of theoretical material and implementations. Features: * Covers both lossy and lossless compression techniques with applications to image, speech, text, audio, and video compression. * Official compression standards for video, audio, text, and facsimile are discussed in order to illustrate the techniques: includes JPEG, MPEG, G.728, H.261, and Group 3 and 4 fax standards. * Detailed examples follow each new concept or algorithm. * Software implementations and sample data sets are available, allowing readers to work through the examples in the book and to experiment with various compression techniques on their own. * Optional starred sections provide enhanced technical or theoretical discussions. * Appendices on probability theory, random processes, and matrix concepts are included for reference.