Medical Image Compression for Telemedicine Applications

Transferring medical images from one center to another is common use in telemedicine. These high-quality images stored in DICOM format require higher bandwidth for transmission and large storage space in PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) memory. Therefore, reducing the image size by preserving diagnostic information has become a need. In this sense, medical image compression is a technique that overcomes both transmission and storage cost by suggesting lossy and lossless compression algorithms. There are numerous compression methods developed for region-based studies generally used in the radiography, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) images. In this review, information about region based medical image compression and recent studies with different approaches are expressed.

Keywords: Medical image compression; Lossy; Lossless; Region of interest; Telemedicine; PACS