A State Table SPHIT Approach for Modified Curvelet-based Medical Image Compression

Medical imaging plays a significant role in clinical practice. Storing and transferring a large volume of images can be complex and inefficient. This paper presents the development of a new compression technique that combines the fast discrete curvelet transform (FDCvT) with state table set partitioning in the hierarchical trees (STS) encoding scheme. The curvelet transform is an extension of the wavelet transform algorithm that represents data based on scale and position. Initially, the medical image was decomposed using the FDCvT algorithm. The FDCvT algorithm creates symmetrical values for the detail coefficients, and these coefficients are modified to improve the efficiency of the algorithm. The curvelet coefficients are then encoded using the STS and differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM). The greatest amount of energy is contained in the coarse coefficients, which are encoded using the DPCM method. The finest and modified detail coefficients are encoded using the STS method. A variety of medical modalities, including computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), are used to verify the performance of the proposed technique. Various quality metrics, including peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), compression ratio (CR), and structural similarity index (SSIM), are used to evaluate the compression results. Additionally, the computation time for the encoding (ET) and decoding (DT) processes is measured. The experimental results showed that the PET image obtained higher values of the PSNR and CR. The CT image provides high quality for the reconstructed image, with an SSIM value of 0.96 and the fastest ET of 0.13 seconds. The MRI image has the shortest DT, which is 0.23 seconds.