RECENT TRENDS IN IMAGE COMPRESSION AND ITS APPLICATION IN TELEMEDICINE AND TELECONSULTATION

Every year, terabytes of medical image data are generated through advance imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasonography (US), computed tomography (CT), digital subtraction angiography (DSA), digital flurography (DF), positron emission tomography (PET), X-rays and many more recent techniques of medical imaging. The digitization of the medical image information is of immense interest to the medical community which can lead to the implementation of e-health, teleradiology, tele-consultation, telemedicine and telematics. The digitization and the development of picture achieving and communication systems (PACS) depend critically on efficient compression algorithms. Thereby, to reduce transmission time and storage costs, efficient image compression schemes without degradation of image quality are needed. Several medical image coding techniques have been developed so far for both lossy and lossless compression but rarely any of them serve the purpose. Because of the transmission time and bandwidth constraints of telecommunication links, picture achieving and storage capacity limitations, a high spatial resolution and contrast sensitivity requirements, the medical imagery need to be compressed selectively to obtain optimum performance along with high diagnostic quality as well as good compression ratio (CR) of the reconstructed medical imagery. In this paper, an exhaustive comparative analysis of different compression techniques, the recent trends and their applications in the emerging fields of medical science such as telemedicine and teleconsultation have been carried out. Though, the medical image compression has a bright scope in future but it also has lot of challenges and difficulties to meet out the growing requirements of the medical community.

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