In order to resolve the contradiction between the need of high image quality and low data rates in data transmission and storage in the fields of satellite remote sensing

a new idea of using adaptive block coding technique and multi mode adaptive quantization technique to improve the JPEG LS is proposed. As a result

a new visually loss less coding algorithm-LIGE( Limiting Image Grey Error) is presented. The performance of this algorithm is much better than JPEG LS. Contrast to the DWT based SPIHT

LIGE has the following outstanding characters:Given a threshold Q

the image distortion and the PSNR of the reconstructed image can be predicted in advance

which can guarantee the required reconstructed image quality and avoid excessive loss of original image information. There is no floating point calculation and transform in the algorithm

so the compression speed of the coder is 3 times faster than that of SPIHT. At compression ratio 4:1

the PSNR of the reconstructed images of LIGE is higher than that of SPIHT

especially for the remote sensing image

the quality of the reconstructed image is even better.The result of this paper will be benefitial to the development of the communication system of Chinese satellites.