Extraction of Abnormalities in MRI, CT, X-ray and Ultrasound Images Towards Development of Efficient Compression Algorithm

Abstract

Compression of medical images is essential for teleradiology applications. Medical image compression saves time and bandwidth during data transmission and also reduces storage space. For medical images, the diagnostically useful information termed Region of Interest (ROI) is localized in a small area. A compression algorithm to preserve high quality in diagnostically significant regions and allowing degradation in other regions providing higher compression is necessary. In this proposed work, ROI is processed using lossless compression algorithm and lossy compression elsewhere in the image. Variational level sets with distance regularization segment ROI. The compression algorithm is developed to obtain image with high optimum compression efficiency and also with high fidelity, especially for ROI. A new threshold based medical image compression with edge preservation is proposed to preserve diagnostic information within ROI. The performance of the proposed ROI based compression algorithm is compared in terms of Compression Ratio (CR) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).