THE EFFECT OF LOSSY DISCRETE COSINE TRANSFORM COMPRESSION ON SUBTLE BONE-FRACTURES

Extensive research efforts have been devoted to the feasibility of pic ture archiving and communication Systems (PACS) in recent years, The a dvantages of PACS are numerous but mainly include reduced cost and imp rovement in the operational efficiency of a PACS-based radiology depar tment. In digital radiography, images are viewed either in hard-copy o r soft-copy format. Usually these images are subsequently compressed a nd archived for future evaluation. There are various methods used in i mage compression. In this study, computed radiography images showing s ubtle pediatric bone fractures were compressed with the lossy method o f image compression after they had been initially evaluated on worksta tion monitors. These studies were subsequently evaluated by observers, who were unaware of the interpretations of these images before compre ssion, to determine if they could detect similar abnormalities, Our co nclusion is that there is no difference in the interpretation of soft- copy computed radiographic images before or after lossy 10:1 compressi on in studies of subtle pediatric bone fractures. This is a US governm ent work. There are no restrictions on its use.