Data compression method of left ventricular cineangiograms for their digital database system

This method enables digital optical discs to store the cineangiograms with an equivalent recording density to that of HDTV (high-definition television) VTRs (video tape recorders) under the premise of preserving original image quality. The data volume of the cineangiograms is compressed by approximating the image with a smooth function and storing its coefficients. For efficient compression, the cineangiogram is decomposed into three regions in advance. Each region is then compressed by a difference operation and an adaptive approximation with smooth functions. The performance is tested on 20 cases on actual clinical cineangiograms. The specifications are verified for a spatial resolution of 1000 TV lines, a dynamic range of 60 dB, an SNR of 40 dB[p-p/rms], volume compression into 7% of the original one, and 0.19 s/frame for decoding on a 1.7-MFLOPS machine