Effect of block size on image quality for compressed chest radiographs
Ji Chen, Michael J. Flynn · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1992
Data compression can improve imaging system efficiency by reducing the required storage space and the image transmission time. Transform compression methods have been applied to digital radiographs with good results. Block transform compression is usually based on 8 X 8 or 16 X 16 transform blocks for the sake of simplicity and speed. Compression with these small sizes tends to require accurate coefficient representations to prevent blocking artifacts. Weighted quantization of block transform coefficients can reduce the blocking effects and improve compression performance. Full frame compression has the advantage of eliminating blocking effects but the disadvantage of heavy demand for computing resources. Small block compression can retain local variation better and has a simpler and faster implementation. We have evaluated the performance tradeoffs for different block sizes and their effects on the image quality of chest radiographs. The results showed that there is no significant difference in root-mean-square error nor in power spectra between different block sizes for visually lossless compression (at about 10:1 compression ratio).