Abstract
The international standard for digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still image known as JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) standard is investigated for medical image archiving and communication. The JPEG standard has widely been accepted in the areas of electronic image communication, computer graphics, and multimedia applications, however, due to the lossy character of the JPEG compression its application to the field of medical imaging has been limited. In this paper, the JPEG standard is investigated for medical image compression with a series of head sections of magnetic resonance (MR) images (256 and 4096 graylevels, $256 {\times}256$size). Two types of Huffman codes are employed, i. e., one is optimized to the image statistics to be encoded and the other is a predetermined code, and their coding efficiencies are examined. From experiments, compression ratios of higher than 15 were obtained for the MR images without noticeable distortion. Error signal in the reconstructed images by the JPEG standard appears close to random noise. Compared to existing full-frame bit-allocation technique used for radiological image compression, the JPEG standard achieves higher compression with less Gibb's artifact. Feature of the progressive image build-up of the JPEG progressive coding may be useful in remote diognosis when data is transmitted through slow public communication channel.