In this paper

an improved listless zerotree coding(LZC)Algorithm is presented. LZC is an image coding algorithm that uses no list during encoding and decoding

permitting the omission of the lists requirement in Said and Pearlman's set partitioning in hierarchical trees(SPIHT) algorithm. Consequently

the memory requirement in a VLSI implementation is reduced significantly. The improved LZC algorithm not only includes the advantage of original LZC in which lists do not be used and that is implemented easily in hardware

but also improves the work efficiency of LZC and reduces the complexity of LZC by changing the coding order of spatial subbands

using the concept of block in the coding process and adopting entirely the ordinal structure in the improved LZC image compression algorithm aiming at the disadvantages of original LZC algorithm such as the unreasonable scanning order and the complicating recursive structure. Finally

the experimental results show that our proposed coding method not only has the properties of good vision effect

non square effect and no edge oscillation

but also performs better than that of original LZC algorithm in the aspects of the quality of image reconstruction and PSNR under the basis of the same ratio of compression.