A Study of Medical Image Compression Techniques

Pages:278-284
Seema and Harish Rohil (Department of Computer Science & Applications, Chaudhary Devi Lal University, Sirsa, Haryana)

As medical/biological imaging facilities move towards complete film-less imaging, compression plays a key role. Although lossy compression techniques yield high compression rates, the medical community has been reluctant to adopt these methods, largely for legal reasons, and has instead relied on lossless compression techniques that yield low compression rates. The true goal is to maximise compression while maintaining clinical relevance and balancing legal risk. This paper proposes a study of medical image compression techniques and chooses the best one among them that makes use of clinically relevant regions. Lossless compression is used in these clinically relevant regions, and lossy compression is used everywhere else.