SPIHT-Based Echocardiogram Compression: Clinical Evaluation and Recommendations of Use

This paper describes an echocardiogram coding method that takes into account the visualization modes in order to compress efficiently the echocardiogram, a methodology to evaluate compressed echocardiograms, and the evaluation of the compression method using the proposed evaluation methodology. The compression method takes advantage of the particular characteristics of each visualization mode and uses different compression techniques for each mode to compress efficiently the echocardiogram. A complete evaluation has been designed in order to recommend a minimum transmission rate for each operation mode that guarantees sufficient clinical quality. The evaluation of the echocaradiograms compressed with the proposed method has been carried out. The recommended transmission rates have been established as follows: 200 kb/s for the 2-D and the color Doppler modes, and 40 kb/s for the M and the pulsed/continuous Doppler modes. These rates, especially the latter, are very low compared to previous results. These recommendations are valid for all devices and images compressed with the proposed method. The evaluation process can be applied to any compression method.