Compression of digitized radiology images in a Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) environment can reduce archival storage requirements as well as transmission rate constraints. Often data compression systems are designed for a communication system environment where the encoder must operate in real-time and have a limited complexity while the decoder may be more complex and operate off-line. A PACS network typically has different requirements. We present an overview of the current image compression literature relevant to a PACS environment. We consider both noiseless source-coding which requires perfect reproduction of the image, and source-coding subject to a fidelity criterion which allows some distortion in the reconstructed image. The importance of time-complexity versus compression tradeoffs is discussed.

Date Published: 16 May 1983
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 0418, Picture Archiving and Communication Systems, (16 May 1983); doi: 10.1117/12.935982

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0418:
Picture Archiving and Communication Systems
Samuel J. Dwyer III, Editor(s)