A low power 3-D discrete wavelet transform processor for medical applications

This paper presents a low power 3-D discrete wavelet transform processor for medical applications. The main target of this work is the compression of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data using a wavelet based scheme. A prototype has been developed to realize a 3-D wavelet compressor. The processor is based on an architecture that uses a centrally controlled unit to coordinate sub-systems which carry out the operations necessary for the data compression. The subsystems include a small cache memory used for block data storage, parallel high and low pass filters used for data calculation, and two coefficient units used to retrieve off-chip wavelet coefficients. The processor has been prototyped using 0.6 /spl mu/m CMOS (three metal) technology, the prototype processor is modular. It has been simulated at the functional, circuit, and physical levels. The performance measures of the prototype, area, time delay, power and utilization has been evaluated. The prototype operates at an estimated frequency of 272 MHz and dissipating 0.5 W of power.