Perceptually tuned JPEG coder for echocardiac image compression

In this work, we propose an efficient framework for compressing and displaying medical images. Image compression for medical applications, due to available Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine requirements, is limited to the standard discrete cosine transform-based joint picture expert group. The objective of this work is to develop a set of quantization tables (Q tables) for compression of a specific class of medical image sequences, namely echocardiac. The main issue of concern is to achieve a Q table that matches the specific application and can linearly change the compression rate by adjusting the gain factor. This goal is achieved by considering the region of interest, optimum bit allocation, human visual system constraint, and optimum coding technique. These parameters are jointly optimized to design a Q table that works robustly for a category of medical images. Application of this approach to echocardiac images shows high subjective and quantitative performance. The proposed approach exhibits objectively a 2.16-dB improvement in the peak signal-to-noise ratio and subjectively 25% improvement over the most useable compression techniques.

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