SVBS: a high-resolution medical image compression algorithm using slicing with variable block size segmentation

Medical images such as mammograms and chest X-rays require resolution of the the order of 4096×4096 pixels with 10 to 16 bits per pixel. Because of the poor visualization and extreme sensitive nature of the information content, any information loss in storage and retrieval of medical information may not be acceptable. In this paper, an efficient lossless image compression scheme is proposed for high resolution medical images. The proposed method is based on two concepts: multibit plane slicing and variable block segmentation. It exploits the two basic image characteristics smoothness and similarity to achieve high compression efficiency. The proposed algorithm is applied to 12 and 16 bit mammogram images. The compression efficiency of the proposed algorithm is better than that obtained by other lossless compression schemes including the scheme based on the JPEG standard