Wavelet based compression of digital mammograms

Presents the application of a novel wavelet based still image codec to the compression of digital mammograms. An adaptive vector quantisation scheme has been developed for the quantization of the wavelet coefficients. The available bit budget is optimally distributed among the subbands and noise shaping is performed according to the characteristics of the human visual system. The ability of the proposed system for progressive transmission of images is demonstrated. Progressive transmission is important in image browsing applications where it is desirable to allow the receiver to access a recognizable image as quickly as possible at minimum cost. Then, it can be decided whether to receive further image details or abort transmission