Compression of 3D MRI images based on symmetry in prediction-error field

Three dimensional MRI images which are power tools for diagnosis of many diseases require large storage space. A number of lossless compression schemes exist for this purpose. In this paper we propose a new approach for the compression of these images which exploits the inherent symmetry that exists in the 3D MRI images. A block matching routine is employed to work on the symmetrical characteristics of these images. Another type of block matching is also applied to eliminate the inter-slice temporal correlations. The obtained results outperform the existing standard compression techniques.