Medical image compression using set partitioning in hierarchical trees for (military) telemedicine applications

Imagery is an important source of information both to the military and to the medical doctor. To support highly mobile forces, wireless communications are essential. However, this results in limited bandwidths available for the transmission of information, including imagery. High quality, maximum compression and fast image coding techniques are required both by the military and their field doctors for transmission over their limited bandwidth communications channels. This paper describes our ongoing research into the applicability of SPIHT image coding in a (military) telemedicine system. The performance of coding a typical medical image is also compared against the international standard, JPEG. Set Partitioning In Hierarchical Trees (SPMT) is a new image coding technique, developed by A. Said and W.A. Pearlman (1996), which orders the transform coefficients using a set partitioning algorithm based on the subband pyramid. By sending the most important information first of the ordered coefficients, the information required to reconstruct the image is extremely compact. This new technique offers significant improvement in compression ratios compared with JPEG, Wavelets and Fractals. SPIHT is also one of the fastest codecs available and provides user selectable file size or image quality and progressive image resolution and transmission