Medical image compression and DICOM-format image archive

Abstract

In general, the image formats from radiological modalities are incompatible with the standard DICOM-format. Our system is developed to convert images into DICOM-format that are ready to implement in the medical teleradiological system. The system can process and record the image signal sent to the display unit in the single frame and multiframe image modes. The later mode keeps the set of images in windows bitmap file with .BMP file extension. The resulting images are then compressed with two different techniques - JPEG and JPEG2000. The significant advantage of JPEG2000 over normal JPEG is that the error from JPEG2000 compression is smaller than the error from JPEG. Nevertheless, both methods share a similar mishap; when the compression ratio increases, they both generate more error than the processes on lower compression ratio do. In addition, our system can also convert the image data in normal or automatic DICOM process into the standard DICOM 3.0 format without altering the image data. The final image data can then be used in any radiological modality. © 2009 SICE.