(IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 1
Vol. 2, No. 2, February 2010
Multiple region Multiple Quality ROI Encoding
using Wavelet Transform
P.Rajkumar1 and Madhu Shandilya2
12
, Department of Electronics, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology,
Bhopal, India
madhu_shandilya@yahoo.in
Abstract: The Wavelet Transform, which was developed in the
last two decades, provides a better time- frequency
representation of the signal than any other existing transforms.
It also supports region of interest (ROI) encoding. This allows
different regions of interests to be encoded at different bit rats
with different quality constraints, rather than encoding the
entire image with single quality constraints. This feature is
highly desirable in medical image processing. By keeping this in
mind we propose multiple regions multiple quality (MRMQ)
encoding technique which facilitates different ROIs according to
the priority of enhancement. The paper utilizes the adaptive
biorthogonal wavelet application to keep quality in the highest
priority ROI, as they posses excellent reconstruction features.
The paper also proposes bit saving by pruning the detail
coefficients in the wavelet decompositions and truncating the
approximation coefficients outside ROI by using space
frequency quantization method. Simulation results obtained
shows that, by proposed method the image quality can be kept
high up to loss less in the ROI region while limiting the quality
outside the ROIs.
Keywords: Wavelet Transform, supports region of interest.
1. Introduction to medical imaging
Medical images are now almost always gathered and stored
in digital format for easy archiving, storage and
transmission, and to allow digital processing to improve
diagnostic interpretation.
Recently, medical diagnostic data produced by hospitals
increase exponentially. In an average-sized hospital, many
tetra or 1015 bytes of digital data are generated each year,
almost all of which have to be kept and archived.
Furthermore, for telemedicine or tele browsing applications,
transmitting a large amount of digital data through a
bandwidth-limited channel becomes a heavy burden [1].
Three-dimensional data sets, such as medical volumetric
data generated by computer tomography (CT) or magnetic
resonance (MR), typically contain many image slices that
require huge amounts of storage.
A typical mammogram must be digitized at a resolution of
about 4000 x 5000 pixels with 50 µm spot size and 12 bits,
resulting in approximately 40Mb of digital data. Such high
resolution is required in order to detect isolated clusters of
micro calcifications that herald an early stage cancer. The
processing or transmission time of such digital images could
be quite long. Also, archiving the amount of data generated
in any screening mammography program becomes an
expensive and difficult challenge. [2]
The storage requirement for digital coronary angiogram
video is huge. A typical procedure of 5 minutes, taken at
30 frames per second for 512x512 pixel images results in
approximately 2.5GB of raw data. [3]
2. Need for Image compression
A digital compression technique can be used to solve both
the storage and the transmission problems. An efficient
lossy compression scheme to reduce digital data without
significant degradation of medical image quality is needed.
Compression methods are important in many medical
applications to ensure fast interactivity during browsing
through large sets of images (e.g. volumetric data sets, time
sequences of images, image databases). In medical
imaging, it is not acceptable to lose any information when
storing or transmitting an image. There is a broad range of
medical image sources, and for most of them discarding
small image details might alter a diagnosis and cause severe
human and legal consequences. [1]
In addition to high compression efficiency, future
moving image coding systems will require many other
features. They include fidelity and resolution scalability,
region of interest enhancement, random access decoding,
and resilience to errors due to channel noise or packet loss,
fast encoding/decoding speed, low computational and
hardware complexity.
Recent developments in pattern recognition (regions of
interest segmentation) and image processing have advanced
the state-of-the-art of image processing. During the past few
years, we have applied some of these latest image-
processing techniques on image enhancement classification
and compression.
3. Region of interest (ROI) encoding
Support of region of interest (ROI) access is a very
interesting feature of image compression, in which an image
sequence can be encoded only once and then the decoder can
directly extract a subset of the bit stream to reconstruct a
chosen ROI of required quality [4]
The arbitrarily shaped regions inside an image will be
encoded at different quality levels according to their
importance or, as per diagnostic relevance. The whole
image is transformed and coefficients associated to the ROI
are coded at higher precision (up to lossless) than the
background. Especially in medical imaging ROI coding help
compression method s to focus on those regions that are
important for diagnosis purpose.
2 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
For some applications, only a subsection of the image
sequence is selected for analysis or diagnosis. Therefore, it
is very important to have region of interest retrievability that
can greatly save decoding time and transmission bandwidth.
An important part of genetics analysis starts with
researchers breaking down the nucleus of a human cell into
a jumbled cluster of chromosomes that are then stained with
dye so that they can be studied under a microscope. This
jumble of stained chromosomes, which carry the genetic
code of the host individual, is then photographed, creating a
chromosome spread image (see Fig. 1 (a)). This image is
subsequently subject to a procedure called chromosome-
karyotyping analysis. The result of this procedure is a
karyotype image (see Fig. 1 (b)), the standard form used to
display chromosomes. In this configuration, the
chromosomes are ordered by length from the largest
(chromosome 1) to the smallest (chromosome 22 in
humans), followed by the sex chromosomes. Karyotype
images are used in clinical tests, such as amniocentesis, to
determine if all the chromosomes appear normal and are
present in the correct number. [5] Unlike some other types
of medical imagery, chromosome images (see Fig. 1) have
an important common characteristic: the regions of interest
(ROIs) to cytogeneticists for evaluation and diagnosis are all
well determined and segmented prior to image storage. The
remaining background images, which may contain cell
nuclei and stain debris, are kept as well in routine
cytogenetics lab procedures for specimen reference rather
than for diagnostic purposes. Since the chromosome ROIs
are much more important than the rest of the image for
karyotyping analysis, loss less compression for the former is
required while lossy compression for the latter is acceptable.
This calls for lossy and loss less region-of-interest (ROI)
coding. In contrast, commercial chromosome karyotyping
systems fail to utilize the ROI information by compressing
entire chromosome spread or karyotype images.
Figure. 1(a) A metaphase cell spread image[5]
Figure. 1(b) A metaphase cell’s karyotype[5]
In the karyotype, all chromosomes in the spread are rotated
and copied onto an image with constant background and
positioned according to their classes. The label annotation is
drawn separately.
4. Wavelet transform
Discrete cosine transform and Wavelet transform are more
commonly used for compression. The popular JPEG &
MPEG uses discrete cosines transform based compression;
Vol. 2, No. 2, February 2010
While JPEG 2000 uses Wavelet transform based
compression. The DCT based compression; the algorithm
breaks the image into 8x8 pixel blocks and performs a
discrete cosine transform on each block. The result is an 8x8
block of spectral coefficients with most of the information is
concentrated in relatively few coefficients. Quantization is
performed, which approximates the larger coefficients;
smaller coefficients become zero. These quantized
coefficients are then reordered in a zig zag manner to group
the largest values first, with long strings of zeroes at the end
that can be efficiently represented.
While this algorithm is very good for general purposes,
it has some draw backs when applied to medical images .It
degrades ungracefully at high compression ratios, producing
prominent artifacts at block boundaries, and it can not take
advantage of patterns larger than the8x8 blocks. Such
artifacts could potentially be mistaken as being
diagnostically significant. A wavelet approach was also
suggested by Li who considered the problem of accessing
still, medical image data, remotely over low bandwidth
networks. This was accomplished using a region of interest
(ROI) based approach that allocated additional bandwidth
within a dynamically allocated ROI, whilst at the same time
providing an embedded bit stream, which is useful for
progressive image encoding.[3] Some of the key features of
the wavelet transform which make it such a useful tool are:
• Spatial-frequency localization,
• Energy compaction,
• Decaying magnitude of wavelet coefficients across
sub-bands.
Wavelet based compression schemes generally out
perform JPEG compression in terms of image quality at a
given compression ratio, and the improvement can be
dramatic at high compression ratios. [9]
The Wavelet Transform, which was developed in the
last two decades, provides a better time- frequency
representation of the signal than any other existing
transforms. It supports ROI (region of interest) encoding.
Multiple regions multiple qualities ROI encoding facilitates
different ROIs according to the priority to be enhanced with
different qualities (i.e. at different compression ratios, both
by lossless and lossy methods), while limiting the bit size
outside ROI by compressing heavily (lossy). This paper
proposes the application of adaptive biorthogonal wavelets
to keep quality in the highest priority ROI as they posses
excellent reconstruction features.
4.1 Classification of wavelets
We can classify wavelets into two classes: [7]
(a) Orthogonal and (b) biorthogonal.Based on the
application, either of them can be used.
4.1.1 Features of orthogonal wavelet filter banks
The coefficients of orthogonal filters are real numbers. The
filters are of the same length and are not symmetric.
The low pass filter, G and the high pass filter, H are related
to each other by
0 0
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 3
-N -1
H (z) = z G (-z ) (1)
0 0
The two filters are alternated flip of each other. The
alternating flip automatically gives double-shift
orthogonality between the low pass and high pass filters,
i.e., the scalar product of the filters, for a shift by two is zero
i.e, ∑G [k] H [k-2l] = 0, where k,lεZ . Perfect
reconstruction is possible with alternating flip.
Also, for perfect reconstruction, the synthesis filters are
identical to the analysis filters except for a time reversal.
Orthogonal filters offer a high number of vanishing
moments. This property is useful in many signal and image
processing applications. They have regular structure, which
leads to easy implementation and scalable architecture.
4.1.2 Features of biorthogonal wavelet filter banks
In the case of the biorthogonal wavelet filters, the low pass
and the high pass filters do not have the same length. The
low pass filter is always symmetric, while the high pass
filter could be either symmetric or anti-symmetric. The
coefficients of the filters are either real numbers or integers.
For perfect reconstruction, biorthogonal filter bank has
all odd length or all even length filters. The two analysis
filters can be symmetric with odd length or one symmetric
and the other antisymmetric with even length. Also, the
two sets of analysis and synthesis filters must be dual. The
linear phase biorthogonal filters are the most popular filters
for data compression applications
The analysis and synthesis equations for the biorthogonal
DWT of any x (t) ε L2(R) are
Analysis
ã j,κ = ∫ x(t)2j/2φ̃(2jt-k)dt (2)
b̃j,κ = ∫ x(t)2j/2ψ̃(2jt-k)dt (3)
Synthesis
M-1
x(t)= 2 N/2Σ ãN,k φ(2 Nt-k) + Σ 2j/2
k j=N
Σ b̃j,k ψ(2 jt-k) (4)
k through each stage of decomposition.
{Φ i,j (t)Ψi,j (t)} and {Φi,j(t) Ψ˜i,j(t)} are the biorthogonal
basis functions[8]. a˜j,k and b˜j,k are the scaling and
wavelet coefficients respectively; together they form the
biorthogonal DWT coefficients of x(t). The DWT starts at
some finest scale j = M and stops at some coarsest scale j =
N. M - N is the number of levels of decomposition in the
biorthogonal DWT of x (t).
4.1.3 Selection of wavelet from the biorthogonal family:
Different wavelets will be suited for different types of
images. One wavelet basis may produce highest coefficient
for a picture, may not necessarily produce highest
Vol. 2, No. 2, February 2010
coefficients for all pictures for all images while
decomposing the image using the wavelet transform.
Keeping this in the mind, Adaptive wavelet basis
function is additionally proposed. Amongst the all important
biorthogonal wavelet basis functions, a particular wavelet
basis function is chosen on the basis of comparison of the
highest coefficients produced by all the different wavelet
basis functions at the first level of the decomposition
process. The proposed MRMQ Encoding uses the Discrete
Wavelet Transform, chooses the right Biorthogonal basis
function on the basis of the highest coefficient produced in
the highest priority ROI amongst of all the ROIs.
5. Multiple Regions Multiple Quality ROI
Encoding
For certain applications, only specific regions in the
volumetric data or video are of interest. For example, in
MR imaging of the skull, the physician is mostly concerned
about the features inherent in the brain region. In video
conferencing, the speaker’s head and shoulders are of main
interest and need to be coded at higher quality whereas the
background can be either discarded or encoded at a much
lower rate. High compression ratios can be achieved by
allocating more bit rate for region(s) of interest (ROI) and
less bit rate for the remaining regions, i.e. the background.
Region-based image coding schemes using
heterogeneous (multiple) quality constraints are especially
attractive because they not only can well preserve the
diagnostic features in region(s) of interest, but also meet the
requirements of less storage and shorter transmission time
for medical imaging applications and video transmission.
A main advantage of the proposed technique is that it
supports multiple-region multiple-quality (MRMQ) coding.
By this method, total bit budget can be allocated among
multiple ROIs and background depending on the quality
constraints. Experimental results show that this technique
offers reasonably well performance for coding multiple
ROIs.
To support region of interest (ROI) coding, it is
necessary to identify the wavelet transform coefficients
associated with the ROI. We have to keep track of the
coefficients that are involved in the reconstruction of ROI
5.1 ROI Coding
We use region mapping which trace the positions of
pixels in an ROI in image domain back into transform
domain by inverse DWT. The coefficients of greater
importance are called ROI coefficients, the rest are called
background coefficients.
The coding algorithm, fig.2 needs to keep track of the
locations of wavelet coefficients according to the shape of
the ROI. To obtain the information about ROI coefficients, a
mask image, which specifies the ROI, is decomposed by the
wavelet decomposition of the image. In each decomposition
stage, each subband of the decomposed mask contains
information for specifying the ROI in that subband. By
successively decomposing the approximation coefficients
4 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 2, February 2010

(LL subband) for a number of decomposition levels,

information about ROI coefficients is obtained.

Figure 3. Original medical Image of

abdominal operation (2.32bpp)

Figure 2. ROI Encoding using Wavelet Transform Figure 4. ROI Enhanced medical image of fig. 3
Here no. of ROI =2(0.92bpp, PSNR =25.2db)
5.2 Outside ROI

Space –Frequency Quantization (SFQ) technique exploits

both spatial and frequency compaction property of the
wavelet transform through the use of two simple PSNR
quantization modes.
To exploit the spatial compaction property, a symbol is
defined, that indicates that a spatial region of high
frequency coefficients has zero value. Application of this
symbol is referred to as zero-tree quantization. This is done Bits per pixel
in the first phase called Tree Pruning Algorithm. In the
next phase called Predicting the tree, the relation between a
spatial region in image and the tree- structured set of Figure 5. PSNR vs. bits per pixel of the ROI enhanced
coefficients is exploited. Zero tree quantization can be Image “abdomen”
viewed as a mechanism for pointing to the location where Note: ROI area is 17230pixels and Image is 448x336 pixels.
high frequency coefficients are clustered. Thus, this
quantization mode directly exploits the spatial clustering of
high frequency coefficients predicted.
For coefficients that are not set to zero by zero tree
quantization, a common uniform scalar quantization,
independent of coefficient frequency band is applied.
Uniform quantization followed by entropy coding provides
nearly optimal coding efficiency.
Figure 6. Teratoma affected baby
6. Results

In Fig. 3 an Image is taken showing the abdominal

operation. In the above Image MRMQ ROI encoding is
applied. The result is shown in fig. 4.Here the no. of ROIs
are 2, as shown the area outside the ROI is heavily degraded Figure 7. ROI enhanced Teratoma affected baby
.The PSNR of this image is 25dB.while the quality is (Background degraded)
lossless in the ROI. The PSNR vs. bits per pixel of the ROI
enhanced Image at various compression points is plotted in
fig.5. This shows that although the PSNR difference is less
whiles the bits per pixel reduces from 1bpp to 0.5 bpp using
Matlab® simulation.

Fig. 6 an image of a newborn baby affected by

sacrococcyged teratoma (before surgery) is taken. In fig. 7
the area outside the ROI is heavily degraded. In fig. 8,
Outside the ROI is excluded for further reducing the bit size
requirement. The PSNR vs. bits per pixel at various Figure 8. ROI enhanced Trachoma affected baby
compression points are plotted in fig. 9. (Background excluded)
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 5
Vol. 2, No. 2, February 2010

Electronics, Vol. 46, No. 4, pp. 1103-1127, November

2000.

[7] K.P.Soman and K.I.Ramachandran -Insight Into

Wavelets –From Theory to Practice,PHI Publications.
PSNR [8] Sonja Grgic, Mislav Grgic, and Branka Zovko-Cihlar,
(db) Performance Analysis of Image Compression Using
Wavelets, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics,
vol.48, no. 3, June 2001.
[9] Michael W. Marcellina, Margaret A. Lepleyb, Ali
Bits per pixel Bilgina, Thomas J. Flohrc, Troy T. Chinend, James H.
Kasner, An overview of quantization in JPEG 2000
Figure 9. PSNR vs. bpp of the ROI enhanced Teratoma Signal Processing: Image Communication 17 (2002) 73–
affected baby 84.

7. Conclusions Authors Profile

The simulation results give bits per pixel with
corresponding PSNR values for the proposed MRMQ ROI
encoding. It has been observed that for still images, the bit
size requirement was made less by degrading the image
quality out side the ROI, while keeping the quality of image
uncompromised in the ROI region.
In the present paper, still image results are simulated
with the biorthogonal wavelet transform family for the
multiple region multiple quantization (MRMQ) ROI coding,
therefore further analysis can be extended in the field of
video processing. Also the present analysis is carried on the
medical still images, which can be extended for the video
processing with graphical and natural images.
P.Rajkuma received the M.Tech. Degree in Electronics
Engineering from Maulana Azad National Institute of
Tech.Bhopal, India in 2006.He is doing his research in the area of
medical image processing.
Madhu Shandilya received the M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees in
Electronics Engineering from Maulana Azad National Institute of
Tech.Bhopal, India in 1994 and 2005, respectively. From last 22
years she is associated with Electronics Engineering from Maulana
Azad National Institute of Tech.Bhopal. She has
published/presented about 20 papers in various national and
international journals /conferences. Her area of specialization is
digital image processing.

References

[1] Shaou-Gang Miaou, Shih-Tse Chen, Shu-Nien Chao ,

Wavelet-Based Lossy-to-Lossless Medical Image
Compression Using Dynamic VQ And SPIHT Coding,
Biomedical Engineering applications, Basis
&Communications. Pg 235-242 Vol. 15 No. 6 December
2003.
[2] M´onica Penedo, William A. PearmanPablo G.
Tahoces, Miguel Souto, Juan J. Vidal,
EmbeddedWavelet Region-Based Coding Methods
Applied To Digital Mammography IEEE International
Conference on Image Processing, vol.3 Barcelona,
Spain 2003.
[3] David Gibson, Michael Spann, Sandra I. Woolley, A
Wavelet-Based Region of Interest Encoder for the
Compression of Angiogram Video Sequences, IEEE
Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine
8(2): 103-113 (2004)
[4] Kaibin Wang, B.Eng., M.Eng. Thesis: Region-Based
Three-Dimensional Wavelet Transform Coding,
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, May, 2005.
[5] Zixiang Xiong, Qiang Wu and Kenneth R.,Castlemen,
Enhancement, Classification And Compression Of
Chromosome Images. Workshop on Genomic Signal
Processing, 2002 , Cite seer.
[6] Charilaos Christopoulos, Athanassios Skodras ,Touradj
Ebrahimi - The JPEG2000 Still Image Coding
System:An Overview , IEEE Transactions on Consumer