Title: Survey on recent techniques in volumetric medical image compression

Authors: T. Kesavamurthy; K. Thiyagarajan

Addresses: Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, Coimbatore 641 004, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, Coimbatore 641 004, India

Abstract: Recent advances in medical imaging technology have led to ubiquitous use of medical images for diagnosis. As a result, huge amount of medical image data is generated on a daily basis in hospitals. This data needs to be stored digitally for efficient diagnosis, transmission and for future study and follow up. This requires a large amount of storage space which is especially true for three-dimensional (3-D) medical data formed by combining medical images which are in slices. Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) protocol has created to be the international standard of using various medical imaging modality for archiving patient images digitally. To make efficient utilisation of storage space and bandwidth, medical image data sets need to be compressed efficiently. Picture Archieving and Communications (PACS) technology have been developed in an attempt to provide economical storage, rapid retrieval of images, access to images acquired with multiple modalities and simultaneous access at multiple workstations. Therefore compression technique in PACS is more important part than the way of storage and transmission. In this paper recent techniques in volumetric medical image coding is introduced and a wide variety of lossless medical image compression techniques have been discussed.

Keywords: DICOM; digital imaging and communications in medicine; PACS; picture archieving and communications; lossless image compression; volumetric medical images; storage space; bandwidth; workstations; medical imaging; patient images; image retrieval.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSISE.2013.056639

International Journal of Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering, 2013 Vol.6 No.4, pp.250 - 258

Received: 04 Mar 2011
Accepted: 29 Feb 2012

Published online: 30 Sep 2013 *

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