Compression Effects of JPEG and JPEG2000 on Temporal-Bone Images

Abstract

The efficient compression of medical images is important for improved storage and network utilization. The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) baseline compression algorithm has been widely used in medical image compression. In contrast, JPEG2000 is a relative new compression standard. The purpose of this study is to provide a quantitative comparison of JPEG and JPEG2000 compression effects on temporal-bone images. Three types of images are investigated – x-ray microCT, orthogonal-plane fluorescence images (OPFI) and histology images. The image quality with different compressed ratios is evaluated by Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR). The study shows that for our grey-scale images, JPEG2000 compression is superior to JPEG for lossy compression with both high compression ratio (1:64) and low compression ratios (1:4 and 1:8). In the middle range of compression ratios (1:16 – 1:32), JPEG and JPEG2000 have the same effects. For our colour histology images, JPEG2000 is superior to the JPEG at all tested compression ratios.