Wavelet coding of volumetric medical images for high throughput and operability

This paper presents a new three-dimensional (3-D) wavelet-based scalable lossless coding scheme for compression of volumetric medical images. Aiming to improve the productivity of radiologists and the cost-effectiveness of the system, we strive to achieve high decoder throughput, random access to coded data volume, progressive transmission, and high compression ratio in a balanced design approach. These desirable functionalities are realized by a modified 3-D dyadic wavelet transform tailored to volumetric medical images and an optimized Rice code of very low complexity.     

Lossy-to-lossless compression of medical volumetric data using three-dimensional integer wavelet transforms

We study lossy-to-lossless compression of medical volumetric data using three-dimensional (3-D) integer wavelet transforms. To achieve good lossy coding performance, it is important to have transforms that are unitary. In addition to the lifting approach, we first introduce a general 3-D integer wavelet packet transform structure that allows implicit bit shifting of wavelet coefficients to approximate a 3-D unitary transformation. We then focus on context modeling for efficient arithmetic coding of wavelet coefficients. Two state-of-the-art 3-D wavelet video coding techniques, namely, 3-D set partitioning in hierarchical trees (Kim et al., 2000) and 3-D embedded subband coding with optimal truncation (Xu et al., 2001), are modified and applied to compression of medical volumetric data, achieving the best performance published so far in the literature-both in terms of lossy and lossless compression.     

MODIS多光谱图像压缩研究

为有效存储MODIS多光谱图像数据,该文提出一种基于谱间预测和整数小波变换的多光谱图像压缩算法.首先通过构造谱间最优预测器去除谱间冗余,再利用整数小波变换和SPIHT算法对预测误差图像去除空间冗余,最后进行自适应算术编码.该方法可实现MODIS多光谱图像的无损、近无损和有损压缩,取得了满意的实验结果;在不同小波基条件下与3D-SPIHT算法比较,表明了该方法的有效性.     

Lossy compression of volumetric medical images with 3D dead-zone lattice vector quantization

This paper presents a new lossy coding scheme based on 3D wavelet transform and lattice vector quantization for volumetric medical images. The main contribution of this work is the design of a new codebook enclosing a multidimensional dead zone during the quantization step which enables to better account correlations between neighbor voxels. Furthermore, we present an efficient rate–distortion model to simplify the bit allocation procedure for our intra-band scheme. Our algorithm has been evaluated on several CT- and MR-image volumes. At high compression ratios, we show that it can outperform the best existing methods in terms of rate–distortion trade-off. In addition, our method better preserves details and produces thus reconstructed images less blurred than the well-known 3D SPIHT algorithm which stands as a reference.     

A fast and low memory image coding algorithm based on lifting wavelet transform and modified SPIHT

Due to its excellent rate–distortion performance, set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) has become the state-of-the-art algorithm for image compression. However, the algorithm does not fully provide the desired features of progressive transmission, spatial scalability and optimal visual quality, at very low bit rate coding. Furthermore, the use of three linked lists for recording the coordinates of wavelet coefficients and tree sets during the coding process becomes the bottleneck of a fast implementation of the SPIHT. In this paper, we propose a listless modified SPIHT (LMSPIHT) approach, which is a fast and low memory image coding algorithm based on the lifting wavelet transform. The LMSPIHT jointly considers the advantages of progressive transmission, spatial scalability, and incorporates human visual system (HVS) characteristics in the coding scheme; thus it outperforms the traditional SPIHT algorithm at low bit rate coding. Compared with the SPIHT algorithm, LMSPIHT provides a better compression performance and a superior perceptual performance with low coding complexity. The compression efficiency of LMSPIHT comes from three aspects. The lifting scheme lowers the number of arithmetic operations of the wavelet transform. Moreover, a significance reordering of the modified SPIHT ensures that it codes more significant information belonging to the lower frequency bands earlier in the bit stream than that of the SPIHT to better exploit the energy compaction of the wavelet coefficients. HVS characteristics are employed to improve the perceptual quality of the compressed image by placing more coding artifacts in the less visually significant regions of the image. Finally, a listless implementation structure further reduces the amount of memory and improves the speed of compression by more than 51% for a 512×512 image, as compared with that of the SPIHT algorithm.     

Automatic quality control for wavelet-based compression of volumetric medical images using distortion-constrained adaptive vector quantization

The enormous data of volumetric medical images (VMI) bring a transmission and storage problem that can be solved by using a compression technique. For the lossy compression of a very long VMI sequence, automatically maintaining the diagnosis features in reconstructed images is essential. The proposed wavelet-based adaptive vector quantizer incorporates a distortion-constrained codebook replenishment (DCCR) mechanism to meet a user-defined quality demand in peak signal-to-noise ratio. Combining a codebook updating strategy and the well-known set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) technique, the DCCR mechanism provides an excellent coding gain. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is superior to the pure SPIHT and the JPEG2000 algorithms in terms of coding performance. We also propose an iterative fast searching algorithm to find the desired signal quality along an energy-quality curve instead of a traditional rate-distortion curve. The algorithm performs the quality control quickly, smoothly, and reliably.     

一种结合Contourlet和小波变换的图像编码算法

该文提出了一种Contourlet变换和小波变换相结合,使用新的空间方向树的类似SPIHT编码算法。该算法先对图像进行Contourlet变换,再对变换后的低频子带进行多级小波变换,然后根据变换后系数的结构特性,借鉴小波SPIHT编码思想,构造了一种新的空间方向树,实现了对变换后系数的类似SPIHT编码。仿真实验结果表明,该算法与小波变换,Contourlet变换和基于小波的Contourlet变换的SPIHT算法相比,重构图像保留了更多的纹理和细节信息,并且在低比特率下具有较高的峰值信噪比。     

一种新颖的中子辐照图像压缩算法

分析了中子辐照图像的持点,提出一种适合于数字中子照相系统的图像压缩算法。将小波和方向滤波器组（DFB）结合,得到非冗余的图像变换WDFB;通过WDFB系数的重新组合,提出一种新颖的图像压缩方案,该方案类似于无表零树编码（LZC）算法;为了充分利用WDFB变换对二维分段光滑函数的良好表达能力,该算法引入线性索引技术并采用不同于LZC算法的零树表达策略。实验结果表明,该算法用于中子辐照图像压缩是有效的,在相同压缩比下,其主观视觉质量和峰值信噪比（PSNR）都明显优于LZC算法,和多级树集合分裂编码（SPIHT）算法相比,具有相当的压缩性能但更易于硬件实现。     

一种基于低复杂度嵌入零块编码的遥感图像压缩编码方法

该文针对遥感图像的数据特点,提出了一种新的遥感图像编码方法。它基于一种改进的小波变换嵌入零块编码算法。新算法中改进了零块编码中四叉树分裂算法(quadtree),并设计亍新的链表生成和不重要集合排序策略。通过这些方法的改进,不仅提高了图像编码性能,同时还大大提高了运算效率。实验表明该文阐述的算法具有很低的复杂度和高的压缩率,PSNR和计算速度均超过SPIHT和SPECK。在1bpp下,该文方法的PSNR比SPIHT提高了0.3dB以上,计算速度比SPIHT提高了35％。     

Adaptive compression of medical ultrasound images

An adaptive image-coding algorithm for compression of medical ultrasound (US) images in the wavelet domain is presented. First, it is shown that the histograms of wavelet coefficients of the subbands in the US images are heavy-tailed and can be better modelled by using the generalised Student's t-distribution. Then, by exploiting these statistics, an adaptive image coder named JTQVS-WV is designed, which unifies the two approaches to image-adaptive coding: rate-distortion (R-D) optimised quantiser selection and R-D optimal thresholding, and is based on the varying-slope quantisation strategy. The use of varying-slope quantisation strategy (instead of fixed R-D slope) allows coding of the wavelet coefficients across various scales according to their importance for the quality of reconstructed image. The experimental results show that the varying-slope quantisation strategy leads to a significant improvement in the compression performance of the JTQVS-WV over the best state-of-the-art image coder, SPIHT, JPEG2000 and the fixed-slope variant of JTQVS-WV named JTQ-WV. For example, the coding of US images at 0.5 bpp yields a peak signal-to-noise ratio gain of >0.6, 3.86 and 0.3 dB over the benchmark, SPIHT, JPEG2000 and JTQ-WV, respectively.     

Wavelet coding of volumetric medical datasets

Several techniques based on the three-dimensional (3-D) discrete cosine transform (DCT) have been proposed for volumetric data coding. These techniques fail to provide lossless coding coupled with quality and resolution scalability, which is a significant drawback for medical applications. This paper gives an overview of several state-of-the-art 3-D wavelet coders that do meet these requirements and proposes new compression methods exploiting the quadtree and block-based coding concepts, layered zero-coding principles, and context-based arithmetic coding. Additionally, a new 3-D DCT-based coding scheme is designed and used for benchmarking. The proposed wavelet-based coding algorithms produce embedded data streams that can be decoded up to the lossless level and support the desired set of functionality constraints. Moreover, objective and subjective quality evaluation on various medical volumetric datasets shows that the proposed algorithms provide competitive lossy and lossless compression results when compared with the state-of-the-art.     

纯二维全相位滤波器组及其在图像压缩中的应用

基于全相位理论,设计了3种纯二维全相位滤波器组(ADFB).这些滤波器组可以直接对图像进行纯二维分解和重构,若忽略滤波器的有限精度问题,系统是全重建的.为了减小运算量,纯二维ADFB采用提升格式实现.仿真试验表明,纯二维ADFB具有良好的数据压缩特性.在压缩率相同的情况下,尤其是IDCT-AFB7.7比Daubechies9/7小波重建图像的峰值信噪比(PSNR)最多小0.7 dB,这与采用的适合于可分离二维小波变换的四叉树SPIHT编码方案有关,若采用二叉树SPIHT编码,会使压缩效果得到改善.     

基于3维SPIHT编码的超光谱图像压缩

提出一种针对超光谱图像压缩的3维SPIHT编码算法.通过对超光谱图像进行3维小波变换,同时去除像素数据间的空间冗余和谱间冗余.针对变换后得到的小波系数,构造一种3维空间方向树结构,并用经3维扩展后的SPIHT算法(3D SPIHT算法)对小波系数进行量化编码.实验证明,基于3维小波变换的3维SPIHT编码算法在对超光谱图像压缩时,表现出了优良的率失真性能.并且算法复杂度适中,具有嵌入式特性.     

Listless block-tree set partitioning algorithm for very low bit rate embedded image compression

This paper presents a listless implementation of wavelet based block tree coding (WBTC) algorithm of varying root block sizes. WBTC algorithm improves the image compression performance of set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) at lower rates by efficiently encoding both inter and intra scale correlation using block trees. Though WBTC lowers the memory requirement by using block trees compared to SPIHT, it makes use of three ordered auxiliary lists. This feature makes WBTC undesirable for hardware implementation; as it needs a lot of memory management when the list nodes grow exponentially on each pass. The proposed listless implementation of WBTC algorithm uses special markers instead of lists. This reduces dynamic memory requirement by 88% with respect to WBTC and 89% with respect to SPIHT. The proposed algorithm is combined with discrete cosine transform (DCT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) to show its superiority over DCT and DWT based embedded coders, including JPEG 2000 at lower rates. The compression performance on most of the standard test images is nearly same as WBTC, and outperforms SPIHT by a wide margin particularly at lower bit rates.     

Optimization and implementation of the integer wavelet transformfor image coding

This paper deals with the design and implementation of an image transform coding algorithm based on the integer wavelet transform (IWT). First of all, criteria are proposed for the selection of optimal factorizations of the wavelet filter polyphase matrix to be employed within the lifting scheme. The obtained results lead to the IWT implementations with very satisfactory lossless and lossy compression performance. Then, the effects of finite precision representation of the lifting coefficients on the compression performance are analyzed, showing that, in most cases, a very small number of bits can be employed for the mantissa keeping the performance degradation very limited. Stemming from these results, a VLSI architecture is proposed for the IWT implementation, capable of achieving very high frame rates with moderate gate complexity.     

Low-bit-rate coding of underwater color image using improved wavelet difference reduction

Underwater image compression has been the key technology for transmitting massive amount of image data via underwater acoustic channel with limited bandwidth. According to the characteristics of underwater color images, an efficient underwater image compression method has been developed. The new coding scheme employs a wavelet-based preprocessing method to remove the visual redundancy, and adopts a Wavelet Tree-based Wavelet Difference Reduction (WTWDR) algorithm to remove the spatial redundancy of underwater color images. Instead of scanning whole transformed image like the WDR method, the difference reduction coding is used for each significant wavelet tree in the proposed WTWDR algorithm based on the correlation between the subbands of higher levels and lower levels of a transformed image. The experimental results show that for underwater color images the proposed method outperforms both WDR and SPIHT at very low bit rates in terms of compression ratio and reconstructed quality, while for natural images it has similar performance with WDR and SPIHT. Hence, the proposed approach is especially suitable for underwater color image compression at very low bit rates.     

基于改进SPIHT的医学图像压缩

为了满足医学数据的存储和传输的需要,在SPIHT算法的基础上,提出了一种基于改进SPIHT的医学图像压缩算法,实现了对医学图像的编码。该算法在减少编码时间的同时,能够得到较高的压缩比,重建图像的峰值信噪比也有明显的提高。选取几幅医学图像进行有效性的验证,试验结果表明:此算法可以更好地保留图像的客观质量,提高了编解码的效率,获得了较好的压缩效果。     

Wavelet-based space-frequency compression of ultrasound images

This paper describes the compression of grayscale medical ultrasound images using a recent compression technique, i.e., space-frequency segmentation (SITS). This method finds the rate-distortion optimal representation of an image from a large set of possible space-frequency partitions and quantizer combinations and is especially effective when the images to code are statistically inhomogeneous, which is the case for medical ultrasound images. We implemented a compression application based on this method and tested the algorithm on representative ultrasound images. The result is an effective technique that performs better than a leading wavelet-transform coding algorithm, i.e., set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT), using standard objective distortion measures. To determine the subjective qualitative performance, an expert viewer study was run by presenting ultrasound radiologists with images compressed using both SFS and SPIHT. The results confirmed the objective performance rankings. Finally, the performance sensitivity of the space-frequency codec is shown with respect to several parameters, and the characteristic space-frequency partitions found for ultrasound images are discussed     

基于整数小波变换的无人机侦查图像的压缩

基于传统小波变换过程复杂的特点和SPIHT编码算法过程重复运算、存储量大,并且侦查图像的目标像素小且目标数量大,相关性低,提出了一种基于差分脉冲编码调制和整数小波变换相结合的改进混合编码算法。首先以压缩效果为准则,以侦查图像为标准训练图像,以压缩比、峰值信噪比为参数来确定最优的小波基。然后以（9,7）整数提升小波对图像进行分解,对低频子带的重要系数先进行DPCM编码。最后对整个变换后的子带进行SPIHT编码。实验结果表明该算法在相同的比特率下得到的重构图像的PSNR值高于原算法,而且侦查图像的低频近似效果得到了改善。     

Efficient Lossless Compression of 4-D Medical Images Based on the Advanced Video Coding Scheme

This paper presents an efficient lossless compression method for 4-D medical images based on the advanced video coding scheme (H.264/AVC). The proposed method efficiently reduces data redundancies in all four dimensions by recursively applying multiframe motion compensation. Performance evaluations on real 4-D medical images of varying modalities including functional magnetic resonance show an improvement in compression efficiency of up to three times that of other state-of-the-art compression methods such as 3D-JPEG2000.