Fine granular scalability (FGS) coding method has fine-grained scalable capability and can be adapted to dynamic variation of network bandwidth.So it is considered as a good coding scheme suitable for video transmission over network.But current MPEG-4 FGS coding standard is not efficient

which will restrict its application.Therefore

a quality fine granular scalable coding scheme for head shoulder sequence images

which are commonly seen in video applications

is implemented in this paper.The base layer is encoded with H.26L and the residual signal between the original image and the reconstructed image from base layer is encoded with a DCT-based SPIHT coding method to achieve the enhancement layer bit stream.Automatic human face detection and tracing algorithm in a complex background is combined with selective enhancement technique to encode human face region with high priority.Experimental results show that the overall coding efficiency gain of this method is higher than that of MPEG-4 FGS standard and the bit stream is fine granular scalable.The subjective perceptual quality of reconstructed human face region can be selectively improved.