ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: We wanted to evaluate an acceptable compression rate of JPEG2000 for long term archiving of CT and MR images in PACS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nine CT images and 9 MR images that had small or minimal lesions were randomly selected from the PACS at our institute. All the images are compressed with rates of 5:1, 10:1, 20:1, 40:1 and 80:1 by the JPEG2000 compression protocol. Pairs of original and compressed images were compared by 9 radiologists who were working independently. We designed a JPEG2000 viewing program for comparing two images on one monitor system for performing easy and quick evaluation. All the observers performed the comparison study twice on 5 mega pixel grey scale LCD monitors and 2 mega pixel color LCD monitors, rspectively. The PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) values were calculated for making quantitative comparisons. RESULTS: On MR and CT, all the images with 5:1 compression images showed no difference from the original images by all 9 observers and only one observer could detect a image difference on one CT image for 10:1 compression on only the 5 mega pixel monitor. For the 20:1 compression rate, clinically significant image deterioration was found in 50% of the images on the 5M pixel monitor study, and in 30% of the images on the 2M pixel monitor. PSNR values larger than 44 dB were calculated for all the compressed images. CONCLUSION: The clinically acceptable image compression rate for long term archiving by the JPEG2000 compression protocol is 10:1 for MR and CT, and if this is applied to PACS, it would reduce the cost and responsibility of the system.