Discrete Cosine Transform in JPEG Compression

Image Compression has become an absolute necessity in today's day and age. With the advent of the Internet era, compressing files to share among other users is quintessential. Several efforts have been made to reduce file sizes while still maintain image quality in order to transmit files even on limited bandwidth connections. This paper discusses the need for Discrete Cosine Transform or DCT in the compression of images in Joint Photographic Experts Group or JPEG file format. Via an intensive literature study, this paper first introduces DCT and JPEG Compression. The section preceding it discusses how JPEG compression is implemented by DCT. The last section concludes with further real world applications of DCT in image processing.