Hierarchical structure for data transmission of volumetric medical images using three-dimensional wavelet transform

This paper proposes a hierarchical structure for the data transmission of medical volume data with three-dimensional (3-D) wavelet transform and a loss-less coding scheme. Technological development of CT and MRI has enabled the acquisition of volumetric medical data consisting of a large number of slice images. PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) have been popularized and the data are going to be increasingly used in networks. However, transmission delay and storage costs are outstanding problems for large volumes of data. The proposed structure improves them dramatically using a new 3-D wavelet transform scheme. Furthermore, the scheme improves the quality of the rendered images reconstructed at the intermediate stages in hierarchical transmission.