Content dependent effect of H.264/AVC video compression on CT image quality

Image compression helps perfecting the utilization of limited storage and network resources for medical imaging. In many recent studies, H.264 video compression was deemed to be a promising option. This study was the first of its kind in studying the effect of H.264 compression on the image quality of the CT abdominal images acquired in 12-bit density resolution. In this study, 67 sets of abdominal CT scans were used for quantitative image quality analysis, and indicated that the H.264 algorithm worked on a content dependent manner, especially at high compression levels.