Assuring quality bounds for distance measurements on jpeg 2000 compressed ct scans

Abstract

The effect of JPEG 2000 compression on distance measurements in high resolution computer tomography (CT) images is investigated. The behavior of objective quality criteria are used to develop experiments employing human observers in order to estimate the maximum achievable compression rate (CR) that does not affect distance measurements on this type of images. The graphical behavior of objective metrics is presented. Around CR = 80:1, a maximum permissible error of 1.5 mm in distance measurements is obtained. The confidence in distance measurements would be reduced for images compressed at higher CR values than this. This result facilitates a safer use of JPEG 2000 codec when compressing high resolution images like the images tested, and assures a safer diagnosis task when dealing with distance measurements. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.