An embodiment of the present invention provides an image coding method, where the coding method includes: performing predictive coding on an image; performing transform coding on the image on which the predictive coding has been performed; performing, by using a quantization matrix, quantization coding on the image on which the transform coding has been performed, where the quantization matrix is a matrix reflecting image quantization step information, the quantization matrix includes an M*N quantization matrix and an N*M quantization matrix, and the N*M quantization matrix is obtained by transposing the M*N quantization matrix; and performing entropy coding on the image on which the quantization coding has been performed, and coding the M*N quantization matrix, so as to generate a code stream. In the present invention, the number of bits required for coding a quantization matrix is effectively saved, thereby improving compression efficiency.