Compressing data volume of left ventricular cineangiograms

A method of compressing data volume for left ventricular cineangiograms is proposed. This method enables digital-optical disks to store the cineangiograms with a recording density equivalent to that of high-density television video tape recorders (HDTV VTRs) while preserving the quality of the original image. The data volume of the cineangiograms is compressed by using an approximating function and storing its coefficients. Each cineangiogram frame is first decomposed into three regions: the inner part, the inner wall, and the background. Each region is then compressed by means of a difference operation and an adaptive approximation with smooth functions. Performance was tested for 20 cases using actual cineangiograms. The specifications were verified for a spatial resolution of 1000 TV lines, a dynamic range of 60 dB, an SNR or 40 dB (p-p/rms), volume compression to 7% of the original volume, and 0.19 (second/frame) for decoding on a 1.7 MFLOPS computer.