Sequential quadratic programming is used to design high-performance quincunx filter banks for image coding, where the resulting filter banks have perfect reconstruction, linear phase, high coding gain, good frequency selectivity, and certain prescribed vanishing-moment properties. Design examples are presented and compared to various previously proposed filter banks. The new filter banks are shown to be highly effective for image coding, outperforming previously proposed quincunx filter banks in most cases, and outperforming the well-known 9/7 filter bank in some limited cases.