Level embedded medical image compression based on value of interest

In this paper, we propose a novel compression scheme for medical images with extended bit depth. Our scheme efficiently utilizes the VOI (value of interest) settings of the medical images, so that only a small part of the coded bit-stream is needed at the decoder to lossless display the original image with recommended VOI parameters. Gray-Golomb coding is used to support VOI progressive transmission. In addition, the pixel domain bit-plane coding enables accurate distortion estimation at pixel level for any truncated bit-stream. Compared to JPEG2000, our scheme achieves much higher VOI performance with very slight overall bit-rate increase.