Distortion-constraint compression of three-dimensional CLSM images using image pyramid and vector quantization

Tao, Yegang (2005) Distortion-constraint compression of three-dimensional CLSM images using image pyramid and vector quantization. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The confocal microscopy imaging techniques, which allow optical sectioning, have
been successfully exploited in biomedical studies. Biomedical scientists can benefit
from more realistic visualization and much more accurate diagnosis by processing and
analysing on a three-dimensional image data. The lack of efficient image compression
standards makes such large volumetric image data slow to transfer over limited
bandwidth networks. It also imposes large storage space requirements and high cost in
archiving and maintenance.
Conventional two-dimensional image coders do not take into account inter-frame
correlations in three-dimensional image data. The standard multi-frame coders, like
video coders, although they have good performance in capturing motion information,
are not efficiently designed for coding multiple frames representing a stack of optical
planes of a real object. Therefore a real three-dimensional image compression
approach should be investigated.
Moreover the reconstructed image quality is a very important concern in compressing
medical images, because it could be directly related to the diagnosis accuracy. Most of
the state-of-the-arts methods are based on transform coding, for instance JPEG is based on discrete-cosine-transform CDCT) and JPEG2000 is based on discrete-
wavelet-transform (DWT). However in DCT and DWT methods, the control
of the reconstructed image quality is inconvenient, involving considerable costs in
computation, since they are fundamentally rate-parameterized methods rather than
distortion-parameterized methods. Therefore it is very desirable to develop a
transform-based distortion-parameterized compression method, which is expected to
have high coding performance and also able to conveniently and accurately control
the final distortion according to the user specified quality requirement.
This thesis describes our work in developing a distortion-constraint three-dimensional
image compression approach, using vector quantization techniques combined with
image pyramid structures. We are expecting our method to have:
1. High coding performance in compressing three-dimensional microscopic
image data, compared to the state-of-the-art three-dimensional image coders
and other standardized two-dimensional image coders and video coders.
2. Distortion-control capability, which is a very desirable feature in medical 2. Distortion-control capability, which is a very desirable feature in medical
image compression applications, is superior to the rate-parameterized methods
in achieving a user specified quality requirement.
The result is a three-dimensional image compression method, which has outstanding
compression performance, measured objectively, for volumetric microscopic images.
The distortion-constraint feature, by which users can expect to achieve a target image
quality rather than the compressed file size, offers more flexible control of the
reconstructed image quality than its rate-constraint counterparts in medical image
applications. Additionally, it effectively reduces the artifacts presented in other
approaches at low bit rates and also attenuates noise in the pre-compressed images.
Furthermore, its advantages in progressive transmission and fast decoding make it
suitable for bandwidth limited tele-communications and web-based image browsing
applications.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Supervisor's Name: Supervisor, not known
• Date of Award: 2005
• Depositing User: Mrs Marie Cairney
• Unique ID: glathesis:2005-4926
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 06 Feb 2014 09:31
• Last Modified: 06 Feb 2014 09:37
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/4926