Digital signal processing and compression for functional images

An algorithm for diagnostically lossless dynamic image data compression is proposed. The theory and implementation of this algorithm are presented. Taking advantage of domain specific knowledge related to medical imaging and medical practice, we achieve very high compression ratios. An example using the fluoro-deoxy-glucose tracer and dynamic positron emission tomography is presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. As a result of our study, the storage space for dynamic image data can be reduced by more than 95%, without loss in diagnostic quality.