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. 2019 Jun 17:2019:5810540.
doi: 10.1155/2019/5810540. eCollection 2019.

Analysis of DICOM Image Compression Alternative Using Huffman Coding

Romi Fadillah Rahmat  1 , T S M Andreas  1 , Fahmi Fahmi  2 , Muhammad Fermi Pasha  3 , Mohammed Yahya Alzahrani  4 , Rahmat Budiarto  4
Affiliations

Analysis of DICOM Image Compression Alternative Using Huffman Coding

Romi Fadillah Rahmat et al. J Healthc Eng. .

Abstract

Compression, in general, aims to reduce file size, with or without decreasing data quality of the original file. Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) is a medical imaging file standard used to store multiple information such as patient data, imaging procedures, and the image itself. With the rising usage of medical imaging in clinical diagnosis, there is a need for a fast and secure method to share large number of medical images between healthcare practitioners, and compression has always been an option. This work analyses the Huffman coding compression method, one of the lossless compression techniques, as an alternative method to compress a DICOM file in open PACS settings. The idea of the Huffman coding compression method is to provide codeword with less number of bits for the symbol that has a higher value of byte frequency distribution. Experiments using different type of DICOM images are conducted, and the analysis on the performances in terms of compression ratio and compression/decompression time, as well as security, is provided. The experimental results showed that the Huffman coding technique has the capability to compress the DICOM file up to 1 : 3.7010 ratio and up to 72.98% space savings.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
General architecture.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Prefix tree for symbol with the same appearance frequency.
Figure 3
Figure 3
CT0011.dcm file hex content.
Figure 4
Figure 4
CT0011.HUF file hex content.
Figure 5
Figure 5
File size effect on duration of compression.
Figure 6
Figure 6
File size effect on duration of decompression.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Performance comparison with JPEG2000.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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