Software System for Efficient Lossless Compression of Medical Images

In medical science and surgery preparation, latest trends such as 3D and 4D bio-modeling, telesurgery, telepresence and imaging data archival produce a great amount of data. To achieve a satisfying level of speed in data manipulation and using less storage it is necessary to use some compression method. Lossy compression techniques generally achieve better compression, but reconstructed image differs from the original. Medical imaging is specific regarding compression methods- some important parts of data, such as the region of interests should be stored and transmitted in a lossless way. That is why lossless compression should be employed for those vital parts of interest for diagnostic and surgery analysis purposes. Previous research showed that predictive coding techniques are very effective in lossless compression. Therefore, we propose a complete software system for medical image compression, decoding, and viewing based on our predictive, lossless image compression method CBPC 1. We also introduce new features in the algorithm in order to make it more practical by reducing its computational complexity, while at the same time not incurring its compression efficiency. These improvements substantially improve the processing speed and make our proposed software suitable for integration into current and future paperless hospital information systems. Our software was extensively tested against the compression efficiency and computing time as shown in this paper proving its deployment in medical applications where images need to be delivered with minimum delay using limited communication throughput.