A shape adaptive wavelet transform is performed on a digitized image Signal representing an image. First, a shape information is obtained about the image, and the shape information is applied to a shape adaptive wavelet filter. The shape adaptive wavelet filter detects a starting point and an ending point of the image. The digitized image Signal is divided into a low-frequency component and a high frequency component. Then each frequency component is Sampled, using the shape information. The shape adaptive wavelet filter then generates converted shape information 5,867,602 A * 2/1999 Zandi et al. ......... 382.248 indicating the shape for each Sampled frequency component. 5,870,502 A * 2/1999 Bonneau et al. ..... ... 382/249 5,909.518 A * 6/1999 Chui .......................... 382/277 12 Claims, 5 Drawing Sheets