Hybrid medical image compression method using SPIHT algorithm and Haar wavelet transform

CT or MRI Medical imaging produces a digital form of human body pictures. There exists a need for compression of these images for storage and communication purposes. Current compression schemes provide a very high compression rate with a considerable loss of quality. In medicine, it is necessary to have high image quality in the region of interest, i.e. diagnostically important regions. So, ROI part can be compressed with the help of the Lossless compression, whereas the Non Region of interest part can be compressed with the help of Lossy compression as it is of lesser importance for diagnosis. In this paper Region of interest part is extracted with the help of thresholding method of segmentation and compressed with the help of SPIHT Algorithm thus producing a good quality image and NROI part is compressed with the help of Haar wavelet transform. Our algorithm provides better PSNR values for medical images.