Observer performance for JPEG vs. Wavelet image compression of x-ray coronary angiograms

Development of "filmless" cardiac catheterization laboratories is eminent. The problems of implementing a digital catheterization laboratory involve a rchiving large amounts of data per procedure and high transfer rates to ret rieve previous procedures. Lossy compression can accommodate these changes, but at the cost of possibly impairing detection of clinically important an giographic features. Our study involves the observer detection and classifi cation of features in clinical images and the effects that JPEG and wavelet compression have on the detectability of these features. We found no signi ficant degradation in human observer performance with 7:1 and 15:1 JPEG com pressed images in 6 clinically relevant visual tasks. Human observer perfor mance for wavelet compression degraded significantly for 2 out of 6 tasks a t 7:1 compression and 4 out of 6 tasks at 19:1 compression. (C) 1999 Optica l Society of America.