JPEG2000 and JPEG: image quality measures of compressed medical images

Due to the constraints on bandwidth and storage capacity, medical images must be compressed before transmission and storage. However, when the image is compressed, especially at lower bit rates, the image fidelity is reduced, a situation which cannot be tolerated in the medical field. The paper studies the compression performance of the new JPEG2000 and the more conventional JPEG standards. The parameters compared include the compression efficiency, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), picture quality scale (PQS), and mean opinion score (MOS). Three types of medical images are used - X-ray, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. Overall, the study shows that JPEG2000 compression is more acceptable than, and superior to, JPEG in lossy compression.