Ultrasound and angio image compression by cosine and wavelet transforms.

Abstract

The investigation results for improving lossy compression techniques for ultrasound and angio images are presented. The goal was to determine where the compression process could be improved for the medical application, and to make efforts to improve it. It is proved that the wavelet transform outperforms the discrete cosine transform applied to ultrasound and angio images. A lot of wavelet classes were tried for choosing the best one suited for corresponding image classes, which were characterised by a content complexity criterion. The analysis of international image compression standards was carried out. Special attention was paid to an algorithmical and high level service structure of a new still image compression standard JPEG2000. Its open architecture enables including some wavelet classes which we would like to suggest for medical images. A set of recommendations for acceptable compression ratio for different medical image modalities was developed. It was carried out on the base of compression study performed by the group of angiologists and cardiologists.