The storage and transmission of medical images has made compression a necessity. Recent image compression techniques have increased the viability by reducing the bandwidth requirement and cost-effective delivery of medical images for primary diagnosis. This paper presents an effective algorithm to compress and reconstruct medical images in DICOM format. The medical images are decomposed using Cohen-Daubechies-Feauveau (CDF) wavelet. The wavelet coefficients are encoded using Set Partitioning In Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT). The proposed algorithm also provides enhancement function to improve the perceptual quality of the images. Consistent quality images are produced by this method compared with JPEG and Fractal algorithm.
|