Effects of signal compression on quantitative assessment of myocardial structure in digitally stored 2D echocardiographic images

JPEG compression algorithms produce little degradation of echocardiographic images even at high compression rates. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of different compression levels on the quantitative tonal and textural properties of myocardial structure provided by first and second order statistical algorithms on digitally stored echocardiographic images. JPEG algorithms did not induce significant derangements of quantitative parameters up to high compression rates, suggesting its utilization for digital storage of echocardiographic images to be used also for tissue characterization.