New techniques for visualization of losses due to image compression in grayscale medical still images

To evaluate the visual influence of irreversible compression on medical images, changes of the images have to be visualized. The authors have explored alternative techniques to be used instead of the usual side-by-side comparison, where the information contained in both images is perceived in a single image, preserving the context between compression errors and image structures. Thus fast and easy comparison can be done. These techniques make use of the human ability to perceive information also in the dimensions of color, space, and time. A study was performed with JPEG-compressed coronary angiographic images. Changes in the resulting images for six compression factors from 7 to 30 were scored by an observer. The results show that medically relevant changes, using the JPEG algorithm, appear between compression ratios of 7:1 and 10:1