title: Lossy compression techniques, medical images, and the clinician.
abstract: There has been increasing interest in the storage and retrieval of medical images in hospitals and clinics here in Brazil and elsewhere. At the Heart Institute of São Paulo, with thousands of image-based procedures performed each month, the pursuit of optimal transmission and storage methods for digital images is a major concern. The use of data-compression techniques can reduce the enormous amount of imaging data to be stored or transmitted across a computer network, so that the efficiency of the computing system is preserved. The techniques for image compression can be categorized as "lossless" or "lossy," with "lossy" techniques being those in which some, supposedly irrelevant information is lost. Lossy techniques are much more efficient than lossless ones, achieving data-compression ratios as high as 100:1.
authors.affiliation: Heart Institute, University of São Paulo Medical School, Brazil.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Moura
authors.forename: S S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Furuie
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Gutierrez
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Tachinardi
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Rebelo
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Alcocer
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Melo
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001938:Brazil; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D003199:Computer Systems; D003626:Data Display; D015637:Gated Blood-Pool Imaging; D006801:Humans; D011786:Quality Control; D011873:Radiology Information Systems / Q000295:instrumentation*