International conference on Communication and Signal Processing, April 3-5, 2013, India

Compression Techniques on MR Image A Comparative Study

J. Papitha, G. Merlin Nancy and D. Nedumaran, Member, IEEE
particular for the medical images and specified the suitable method based on the mean exponent error value [3]. Sonal and Kumar discussed the various aspects of Principle Component analysis (PCA) using statistical and neural network approaches for image compression [4]. Devi and Vidhya described a compression algorithm based on CohenDaubechies-Feauveau bi-orthogonal wavelet using set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) method, which exhibited consistent image quality at lower bit rates, efficient compression ratio and good resolution in medical DICOM images [5]. Saravanan and Ponalagusamy applied source symbol reduction with Huffman coding to achieve 10% more compression ratio than the regular Huffman coding [6]. Delcourt et al devised the multi resolution image compression technique, implemented within the multi 2D and full 3D methods and compared with JPEC2000 [7]. Kharate and Patil suggested a wavelet packet best-tree based on threshold entropy with enhanced run-length encoding, which showed a reduction in time complexity compared with JPEG2000 [8]. Kaur and Kaushal studied the performance of various compression algorithms viz., RLE (Run-length Encoding), JPEG 2000, Wavelet Transform and SPIHT on different medical images like ultrasound, CT, MRI and Iris. They found that the SPIHT is the optimum technique on the basis of compression ratio and compression quality [9]. Jindal et al compared the SPIHT coding method with the JPEG and wavelet transform coding methods using higher order metrics via skewness and kurtosis. They found that the SPIHT algorithm performed better at lower bit rates and skewness, where as JPEG was found to have better kurtosis [10]. Jaganathan and Manjusha proposed the cosine based three dimensional algorithm dFuse to compress the DICOM images, which was found to have better performance over the existing methods such as DCT, Haar, Daubechies and DCT [11]. Jayakar et al demonstrated the SPIHT algorithm using different wavelets for color image compression, which converted the color images into luminance and chrominance components and then wavelet transform was applied at a different decomposition level to achieve compression of different bits per pixel [12]. Mohammed and Abou-Chadi applied block truncation coding (BTC) and absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC) for image compression by dividing an image into non-overlapping blocks and selecting the quantization level to remove redundancy. This comparative study revealed that the AMBTC outperforms the BTC in terms of image quality and speed [13]. Alagendran and Manimurugan reviewed some of the existing image compression techniques such as modified SPIHT, DCTCSPIHT and 3D-DHT (Discrete Hartley Transform) for medical image compression and

Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is a standard image format for distribution and viewing of medical images from different modalities. For transmitting the medical images over the internet and for storing for future use, different compression techniques have been employed. This paper addressed most of the existing DICOM image compression techniques and studied the performance of the respective compression algorithms using visual inspection method and verified quantitatively in terms of compressed file size, compression ratio, PSNR and MSSIM. Finally, the optimum compression technique found from this study has been discussed in terms of the visual perception and performance metrics.

AbstractDigital

Index TermsDICOM, Image Compression, LDT, MRI,

PSNR, SPIHT

I. INTRODUCTION Imaging modalities are well established and potentially used tool for diagnosis, treatment, surgery and therapy of various diseases. Most of the medical imaging modalities in particular MRI require at least 5-6 MB of memory space for storing and 16 kBits/sec for image transmission. To reduce the memory storage capacity without affecting the quality of the image and to transmit the images quickly over the internet with minimum transmission error, several image compression algorithms [1-16] have been developed over the years. Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is the recommended format for medical images, which provides information pertaining to an image, imaging modality and patient in a header. Further, the type of compression applied to the image data is defined in the field of the header. Therefore, this study uses the DICOM medical image files for experimenting and evaluating the performance of various compression techniques. Watson developed a function to compute DCT for image compression using quantization and entropy coding [1]. Ramakrishnan and Sriraam proposed the SPIHT (Set Partition in Hierarchical Trees) method for DICOM image compression and faster communication. They separated the header and image data individually and transmitted the header followed by the image data [2]. Mateika and Martavicius discussed several compression formats in
D. Nedumaran is the corresponding author with the Central Instrumentation & Service Laboratory, University of Madras, Guindy Campus, Chennai 600025, TN, India, Phone:91-44-22202768; e-mail: (dnmaran@gmail.com; dnmaran@yahoo.com). J. Papitha is the University Research Fellow working in the department of CISL, University of Madras, Guindy Campus, Chennai 600025, TN, India, (e-mail: papitha_jaya@yahoo.com). G. Merlin Nancy is the M. Sc student of the department of Nuclear Physics, University of Madras, Guindy Campus, Chennai 600025, TN, India, (e-mail: 2nancy89george@gmail.com).

978-1-4673-4866-9/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

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discussed about their performance [14]. Bovik presented several compression algorithms for different types of images [15]. Ansari and Anand made a comparative study of JPEG and JPEC2000 algorithms on medical images and compared their performance in terms of performance metrics [16]. Section II briefly explains the background of the eight different MR image compression methods used in this study. Section III deals with the quality metrics employed for comparing the performance of the compression techniques. Section IV discusses the algorithm development tools. The results and discussions are given in Section V. Section VI describes the conclusions arrived out of this study. II. IMAGE COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES
The various compression techniques experimented in this work are described below.

given coefficient. The image is reconstructed by applying Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform (IDCT). F. Image compression based on Vector Quantization Vector quantization (VQ) is a method of modeling the probability density functions of the signal/image by the distribution of prototype vectors. The vectors are obtained from the image data by extracting non-overlapping square blocks of size nn. The pixels in each block are arranged in a line-by-line order that maps input vectors into a set of code vectors. In VQ, compression is achieved by choosing a codebook with few code vectors corresponding to all possible image vectors [19, 20]. This index is used as an entry for codebook table look-up to reproduce the reconstructed image. It provides many attractive features for image coding applications with high compression ratios [21]. G. Image compression based on Neural Networks In this work, Multi Layer Perception (MLP) neural network compression algorithm was used, which reduces the value of the number of neurons at the hidden layer K less than the neurons at both input and output layers (K N). A set of image samples is selected to train the network via the back propagation learning rule. Training samples of blocks are converted into vectors and then normalized from their gray level range (0,1).

A. Wavelet based compression using sub-band coding Wavelet based image compression is performed by subband coding method using haar wavelet. In this method, the image is divided into well defined frequency bands and subsequently quantization and coding are applied for each band. Here, two-dimensional wavelet analysis functions perform the wavelet decomposition of the matrix at a given level. The output will be the decomposition vector with the corresponding book keeping matrix. B. Wavelet based compression using level dependent thresholds In this technique, the level dependent threshold and the number of coefficients are selected before applying the Harr wavelet. Then, the Haar wavelet is applied, which results in denoising and compression. C. Wavelet based compression using set partition in hierarchical tree method SPIHT is a wavelet-based image compression coder. It first converts the image into its wavelet transform and then transmits information about the wavelet coefficients. The decoder uses the received signal to reconstruct the wavelet and performs an inverse wavelet transform to recover the image. D. Image compression using singular value decomposition Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) takes a matrix (square or non-square) and divides it into two orthogonal matrices and a diagonal matrix, which allows to rewrite an original matrix as a sum of much simpler rank one matrix [17]. For example, a real matrix A can be factorized into three matrices U, S and V and is expressed as (1) where U is a left singular matrix and V is the right singular matrix and S is a diagonal matrix. E. Image compression based on discrete cosine transforms A discrete cosine transform (DCT) converts a signal into elementary frequency components using the sum of cosine functions oscillating at different frequencies [18]. For image compression, DCT will be applied to each layer and split up into blocks for coding individually based on the

Fig 1. Basic image compression structure using neural network

The extracted NxK transform matrix in compressor and KxN in de-compressor of the linear neural network is subjected to Principle Component Analysis (PCA) transform, which provides optimum solution for the linear narrow channel type of image compression and minimizes the mean square error between original and reconstructed image. The training process of the neural network structure is iterative and is stopped when it reaches true values. These outputs must be quantized to the desired number of bits. H. Image compression based on Block Truncation Coding The Block Truncation Coding (BTC) algorithm uses a two-level (one-bit) nonparametric quantizer that adapts to the local properties of the image and preserves the local sample moments. The resized image is divided into number of non-overlapping blocks. Then, the average value of gray level is determined for each block and corresponding logical matrix is also determined. Each pixel of gray level compares to the average gray level of the block [22].

A = USV T

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III. COMPARISON METHODS The various comparison matrices estimated for performance estimation of the algorithm are summarized below. A. Size of the Image Basically size of the image is represented in terms of bits per pixel. The memory cost of an image is computed from the image size. In this work, we calculated the size in Byte per pixel. B. Compression Ratio (CR) The compression ratio is a measure of the ability of data compression technique by comparing the size of the image being compressed to the size of the original image [11]. C. Mean Structural Similarity Index Metric (MSSIM) The structural similarity (SSIM) index expressed in equation (2) measures the image quality based on an initial uncompressed image as reference [23]. The similarity between the two images can be measured using the mean structural similarity (MSSIM) index represented by the equation (3). The SSIM metric can be calculated on various windows of an image. (2 x y + C1 )(2 xy + C2 ) (2) SSIM ( x, y ) = 2 2 2 2 (x + y + C1 )( x + y + C2 )
MSSIM ( X , Y ) = 1 M

sample per pixel value 1 attained with 63.677701 imaging frequency. V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The eight different compression algorithms were tested on more than 200 various MR images for the estimation of quality as well as performance of the compression algorithm. To show the compression results visually, the MR images (36021078ICB) and their outputs are presented here. In all the eight compression algorithms, the decomposition level (DL) was individually selected for each method to achieve better compression ratio and file size. The output of the each compression algorithm corresponding to the 36021078ICB MR image is given in Fig. 2 for visualization and inspection by trained radiologist. Further, to compute the performance of each compression technique, five performance metrics viz., compressed file size, compression ratio, mean square error (MSE), peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and mean structure similarity index matrix (MSSIM) were calculated for the 36021078ICB MR image values are given in Table 1. The calculated performance metrics are given as a histogram plot (MSE, PSNR and MISSIM), and graphical representations (file size and CR) as shown in Fig. 3 for easy comparison of the results obtained. Based on the visual inspection of the original and compressed 36021078ICB MR images (Fig. 2) by trained radiologist, analysis of their respective calculated performance metrics (Tables 1) and graphs (Fig. 3), the following inferences are arrived at. (i) Vector quantization (VQ) technique was found to achieve less file size than the other compression method, but the image quality is considerably reduced that is evident from higher MSE and lower PSNR values. (ii) SVD, DCT, NN and BTC methods showed a less compression ratio but the file size found to be large with very low MSSIM values. (iii) LDT and SPIHT methods were found to achieve best compressed file size with optimum compression ratio and high PSNR and MSSIM values. In summary, the level dependent threshold (LDT) and set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) algorithms are found to be more efficient than the other methods for medical MRI image compression.Visual inspection of the images by the trained radiologist found that the reconstructed images of the LDT and SPIHT exhibit better quality than the other technique for analysis and interpretation of clinical information.
TABLE 1. Performance metrics values of 36021078ICB MR image calculated for different image compression methods Metrics / Methods SBC LDT SVD DCT SPIHT NN VQ BTC DL 4 4 20 2000 4 500 4,4 File size 507540 507544 507544 507544 507540 507544 507408 507452 CR 0.9982 0.9966 0.9966 0.9966 0.9982 0.9966 0.9984 0.9983 MSE 4.7579 0.0395 26.5623 33.3463 6.1109 12.4824 45.7102 11.961 PSNR 41.3566 62.1626 33.8882 32.9003 40.2698 37.1678 31.5307 37.3531 MSSIM 0.9879 0.9996 0.6425 0.5248 0.9508 0.6853 0.6591 0.882

SSIM ( x , y )
i j j =1

(3)

2 where ( x , y ) are the average, ( x2 , y ) are the variance

of x, y, respectively and xy is the covariance of x, y. D. MSE and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio Mean Square Error (MSE) is the ratioio of the square of the difference between the input and output image to the size of the image and is expressed in equation (5). 255 is the number of gray scale resolution (8-bit) of the image, x, y are the number of pixels of the MR image, A and B are the threshold values of the original and the denoised MR images, respectively. Peak Signal to Noise ratio (PSNR) is the ratio of the maximum possible power of a signal to the power of corrupting noise. It is the logarithmic value of the ratio of the size of the image and the mean square error of the image as given in equation (4).

PSNR(dB) = 10log(
MSE =
x y

2552 ) MSE A B )
xy

(4)

(5)

IV. ALGORITHM DEVELOPMENT TOOLS The compression algorithms were developed in MATLAB7.1 installed in a Pentium-IV 3 GHz processor PC with Window XP operating system. All the algorithms developed are tested on various MR images obtained in the DICOM file format. The MR brain images used in this study were taken from Siemens Esaote ARTOSCAN C MRI Machine with a magnetic field intensity of 0.15 Tesla. The algorithm was tested in various MR images of brain with

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Original

SBC

LDT

SVD

DCT

SPIHT

NN

VQ

BTC

Fig 2. Original and compressed images of 36021078ICB MRI

Fig 3. Charts of metrics for different compression methods calculated for the 36021078ICB MR image

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[8]

VI.

CONCLUSION
[9] [10] [11]

Image compression plays a vital role in reducing the file size of the image for sending and receiving information over communication medium, which results in increased speed of transmission by reducing the number of bytes to be transmitted for the faithful reproduction of the image at the receiver end. It also increases the throughput of the device. In this work, we have developed eight compression algorithms in the MATLAB 7.1. The developed algorithms were tested on various MR images for choosing the optimum technique for MR image transmission. The performance of the algorithms was estimated through visual inspection as well as calculated metrics like PSNR, MSE, CR, MSSIM, DL and file size. From the visual inspection and the estimated performance metrics values, it is found that the LDT and SPIHT techniques are found to be the optimum and efficient technique for MR image compression. Further, the LDT method outperforms the other methods, which is evident from very low MSE, very high PSNR, high MSSIM and visual inspection. REFERENCES
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