Quality evaluation of asymmetric compression for 3D surgery video

Enabling 3D video in e-health applications results in the provision of more natural viewing conditions and improved diagnosis. Recent advances in wireless communications, network technologies and 3D video capture/display mechanisms enable the replacement of 2D video applications of current healthcare services with 3D video, to provide improved perception and diagnosis. Remote surgery and surgery training can benefit in particular from 3D video due to the added dimension of depth. This paper envisages a wireless health system which transmits 3D surgical video over next generation wireless networks. Asymmetric coding of 3D video to provide effective medical services over band limited wireless networks is investigated in this paper. The quality of the compressed 3D medical video with the proposed method is measured both objectively and subjectively for a range of compression levels.