Comparative study of wavelet and discrete cosine transform (DCT) decompositions with equivalent quantization and encoding strategies for medical images
Paul W. Jones, Scott J. Daly, Roger S. Gaborski, Majid Rabbani · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1995
Wavelet-based image compression is receiving significant attention, largely because of its potential for good image quality at low bit rates. In medical applications, low bit rate coding may not be the primary concern, and it is not obvious that wavelet techniques are significantly superior to more established techniques at higher quality levels. In this work we present a straightforward comparison between a wavelet decomposition and the well-known discrete cosine transform decomposition (as used in the JPEG compression standard), using comparable quantization and encoding strategies to isolate fundamental differences between the two methods. Our focus is on the compression of single-frame, monochrome images taken from several common modalities (chest and bone x-rays and mammograms).