Paper 8

International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology,
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

A Multiwavelet Based MRI Image Compression for Progressive
Medical Image Processing

Lalitha Y. S
1
, Mrityunjaya V. Latte
2
and Revansiddappa kinagi
3

1
Department of Electronics & Comm. Engg. Godutai Engineering College for Women, Gulbarga. Karnataka, India
patil_lalitha12@yahoo.com

2
Principal, JSS Academy of Technical Education, Bangalore, India.
mvlatte@rediff.com

3
Dept. of Electronics & Communication Engg.Appa Institute of Engineering & Technology, Gulbarga. Karnataka, India
revan_sk@rediffmail.com

Abstract

In emerging medical image applications services, demands better accuracy with speed of operation. In such
application the medical images could be forwarded through wired or wireless network for remote monitoring. To
improve the performance of such system higher resolution compression architecture based on wavelet transforms
had been proposed. The wavelet transform which decomposes the image into different levels where the coefficient
in each sub band are uncorrelated from coefficient other sub bands as a result the coefficient in each sub band
can be quantized independently of coefficient in other sub band with no significant loss in performance, but the
coefficient in each sub band requires different amount of bit resources to obtain best coding performance. To
overcome the come the above problems and an efficient hierarchical Zero tree wavelet coding algorithm is
proposed which exploits the multi-resolution properties of the wavelet transform to give a computationally simple
algorithm with better performance compared to existing wavelet transform. This coding finds the co relational
properties of each band and eliminate the coefficients from each band as per their significance.

Keyword: wavelet decomposition, medical image compression, hierarchal zero coding.

1. Introduction

Along with the advances in computers, communication, and imaging technologies, there has been an
increase in the use and applications of telemedicine: the exchange of medical information (data, voice,
and still or video images) using telecommunication equipment. Telemedicine has already been used
successfully in a number of areas of medicine.
One of telemedicines main attractions lies in the ability to provide specialist medical care to
areas that are underserved, particularly those located remotely from major population centers. Tele-
ophthalmology has the potential to improve the accessibility of people in remote areas to specialist
ophthalmic care, and in turn to help fight preventable blindness. It can also have a large impact on the
costs and necessity of transporting patients to regional centers. As a primary screening tool, tele-
ophthalmology also has a role in identifying patients needing nonurgent treatment. In this way, the
expense of sending ophthalmic teams to remote, isolated, and sparsely populated areas can be reduced.

September Issue Page 59 of 105 ISSN 2229 5216
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

Figure 1: Telemedicine Communication System.

The essential parts of a store-and-forward telemedicine system include good quality data recording
equipment and effective communications systems operated by trained health personnel, and a data
archiving and viewing system accessible by specialist medical personnel. In the case of ophthalmology,
where ocular imaging plays a significant role in clinical diagnosis, good quality digital images of the
retina and external eye form the key part of the system.
Although the technical issues of image capture, digitizing, and transmission can easily be
addressed, two factors that are linked can make the whole tele-ophthalmology system ineffective
Communication systems in remote areas are often of low quality and in some cases nonexistent.
Satellite telephones can be used, but affordable systems suffer from low data transfer rates and are
expensive to operate. Furthermore, digitized ocular images require substantial storage space and take a
long time to transmit. A high-quality digital medical image can reach a size of 1.5 MB or greater. Over
a 9600 bauds/sec modem line, this medical image can take at least 25 minutes to be transmitted,5
which becomes important when a large number of MRI images are to be transmitted. In stated of
sending original large image data there is a need of image compression to send the data at faster rate.
Image compression is common in the transmission of images. JPEG (Joint Photographic
Experts Group) compression, the most common image format used on the Internet, is also used for
medical imaging,[6][8] although Wavelet image compression has also been investigated.[1][2] To
achieve an appreciable reduction in image size (i.e., more than 1:4) some loss of information and
consequently some degradation of image quality must be expected.
JPEG image compression breaks the image into blocks of 8 by 8 pixels and converts these
blocks subsequently into spatial frequency components. A sampling is made of this frequency domain
information (in a step called quantization) by closely preserving the low-frequency components and
approximating the high-frequency components. The amount of information that is discarded
determines the amount of compression. A coding process compresses the remaining frequency
coefficients. The decompressing process reverses these steps. The effects of compression can be seen at
high compression levels when blocking artifacts become evident.
There are a number of different Wavelet algorithms, their differences lying in the type of filter
used. In general, band- and low-run filters are applied to the pixel rows of an image and then reapplied
to the columns of pixels. This produces information on the low-frequency components of the image
and the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal detail in the image. As with the Wavelet Based Compression
algorithm, there are also quantizing and coding steps. A number of studies have been conducted on
medical image compression. Bittorf et al.11 assessed compressed images of skin lesions, concluding
that images needed to be at least 768 3 512 pixels with 24-bit color resolution (i.e., .1 MB images) to
be suitable for diagnosis. Persons et al.7 found that low-contrast objects in the medical images still
remain visible after Wavelet Based Compression and Wavelet image compression of magnetic
resonance imaging and computed tomography images, although fine and irregular details are easily
degraded. Martin et al.6 compressed 2-, 3-, and 4-MB fundus images and found that a compression
ratio of 1:24 still produced images of diagnostic quality. A number of approaches can be taken to find
the optimum level of image compression. Some studies determine the compression level at which
changes from the original image are first noticed (just-noticeable-difference). In one study the
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

compression ratio limit for chest radiograph images is shown to be 1:6.12 Erickson et al.10 rated the
appearance of structures on chest radiographs, finding that a Wavelet image compression ratio of 1:40
produced images indistinguishable from the original images. Another approach is to determine at what
compression level the abnormalities become indistinguishable or the highest compression level that is
clinically acceptable. In a previous study we found that a Wavelet Based Compression compression
ratio of approximately 1:30 (approximately 2030 KB images) can be achieved without affecting the
ability of the ophthalmologist to identify these abnormalities.13 Kim14 used Wavelet Based
Compression compression for 900-KB gastrointestinal color images and showed that compressed
images approximately 20 KB in size were still acceptable.
The rest of the paper organized as follows Wavelet based image compression is briefed in
section 2, in section 3 multiwavelet based image compression is discussed , section 4 contain the
proposed system architecture, results and observations were shown in section 5, The conclusion is
briefed in section 6.

2. Wavelet image compression

The primary goal of any image compression technique is to reduce the number of bits needed to
represent the image with little perceptible distortion. Subband coding using wavelets is one of the best
performing techniques among different transform based image compression techniques. Figure 2
shows the block diagram of a wavelet based image compression system[24]. The first three blocks
(DWT, quantizer and entropy coder) compress the image data whereas the last two blocks (entropy
decoder, inverse discrete wavelet transform (IDWT))reconstruct the image from the compressed data.
The DWT performs an octave frequency subband decomposition of the image information. In
its subband representation, an image is more compactly represented since most of its energy is
concentrated in relatively few DWT coeficients.
The quantizer then performs quantization by representing the transform coeficients with a
limited number of bits. Quantization represents lossy compression some image information is
irretrievably lost. A quantizer in a DWT-based coder exploits the spatial correlation in a wavelet-based,
hierarchical scale-space decomposition.
The entropy coder follows the quantization stage in a wavelet based image compression
system. Entropy coding is lossless; it removes the redundancy from the compressed bit stream.
However, the typical performance improvement of 0.4-0.6 dB [19] achieved by entropy coding is
accompanied by higher computational complexity. We concentrate on the DWT and quantizer blocks.
The channel is the stored or transmitted compressed bitstream. We consider the channel to be
noiseless|the received DWT coeficients are free from errors. The synthesis stage reconstructs the image
from the compressed data. The entropy decoder and IDWT invert the operations performed by the
entropy encoder and DWT, respectively.

Figure 2.: Block diagram of a wavelet based lossy compression system

Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

(a) Wavelet decomposition structure

Figure 3 shows the structure of a 3- level 2-D wavelet decomposition of an image. For multiple
levels of decomposition, the LL band is iteratively decomposed; this results in a pyramid structure for
the subbands with the coarsest subband at the top and the finest subband at the bottom. Figure 3
illustrates the pyramid structure obtained after three-level.

Figure 3: 3-level 2-D decomposition

Figure 4: 3-level 2-D decomposition of MRI image

4 illustrates the pyramid structure obtained after two-level decomposition of the MRI image; notice
that the LL subband from the first stage has been transformed into 4 subbands- the three other
subbands remain unchanged. Color gray in the figure corresponds to the value zero.
The multiresolution nature of the wavelet decomposition compacts the energy in the signal into a
small number of wavelet coeficients. For natural MRI images, much of the image energy is
concentrated in the LL band that corresponds to the coarsest scale. This can be noted in Figure 4. The
LL band is not only a coarse approximation of the image but also contains most of the image's energy.
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

In addition to this, it is also statistically observed that the energy in the finer subbands is also
concentrated into a relatively small number of wavelet coeficients. The significant coeficients in the
finer subbands do not occur at random, but rather tend to occur in clusters in the same relative spatial
location in each of the higher frequency subbands. This self-similar, hierarchical nature of the wavelet
transform can be used to make interband predictions; the location of the significant coeficients in the
coarser bands is used to predict the location and magnitude of significant coeficients in finer subbands.

3. Multi-Wavelet Transform

Multiwavelets were defined using several wavelets with several scaling functions [7]. Multiwavelets
have several advantages in comparison with scalar wavelet [8]. The features such as compact support,
Orthogonality, symmetry, and high order approximation are the base feature for this transformation. A
scalar wavelet cannot possess all these properties at the same time. On the other hand, a multiwavelet
system can simultaneously provide perfect representation while preserving length (Orthogonality),
good performance at the boundaries (via linear-phase symmetry), and a high order of approximation
(vanishing moments) [10]. Thus multiwavelets offer the possibility of superior performance and high
degree of freedom for medical image processing applications, compared with scalar wavelets. The
study of multiwavelets was initiated by Goodman, Lee and Tang. The special case of Multiwavelets
with multiplicity 2 and support (0, 2), was studied by Chui and Lian. When a multiresolution analysis
is generated using multiple scaling functions and wavelet functions, it gives rise to the notion of
multiwavelets [5]. A multiwavelet with r scaling functions and r wavelet functions is said to have
multiplicity r. When r = 1, with one scaling function and one wavelet function, the multiwavelet
system reduces to scalar wavelet system. In Multiwavelet transforms they have two or more scaling
functions and wavelet functions. The set of scaling functions are represented using the vector
notation ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) | |
T
r 2 1
t ... t t t | | | = | where ( ) t | is called the multi-scaling function. The multiwavelet
function is defined from the set of wavelet function ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) | |
T
r 2 1
t ...... t t t = When r = 1, ( ) t is
called a scalar wavelet or simply wavelets. Multiwavelets differ from scalar wavelet systems in
requiring two or more input streams to the multiwavelet filter bank. Multiwavelets are an extension of
the scalar wavelet to the vector case. As in the scalar wavelet case, the theory of multiwavelets is based
on the idea of multiresolution analysis (MRA). The difference is that multiwavelets have several
scaling functions. For multiwavelets, the notion of MRA is the same except that the basis for resolution
V
0
and V
1
is generated by translates of N scaling functions. The multi scaling function and the
multiwavelet function will satisfy matrix dilation equations,

( ) ( ) | = |

= k k
k t 2 H 2 t 1

( ) ( ) | =

= k k
k t 2 G 2 t 2

The filter coefficients H
k
and G
k
are N by N matrices instead of scalar. Corresponding to each
multiwavelet system, there is a matrix-valued with multi-rate filter bank. A multiwavelet filter bank
has taps that are N N matrices. One desirable feature of any transform used in medical image
compression is the amount of energy compaction achieved. A filter with good energy compaction
properties can decorrelate a fairly uniform input signal into a small number of scaling coefficients
containing most of the energy and a large number of sparse wavelet coefficients. Therefore better
performance is obtained when the wavelet coefficients have values clustered about zero with little
variance. Thus multiwavelets have the potential to offer better representative quality than the
conventional scalar transforms. Finally, multiwavelets can achieve better level of performance than
scalar wavelets with similar computational complexity. Wavelets are useful tools for signal processing
applications such as medical image compression and denoising.

Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

For the processing of MRI image using multiwavelet, the typical approach is to process each
of the rows in order, and process each column of the result. Nonseparable methods work in both image
dimensions at the same time [5]. While non-separable methods can offer benefits over separable
methods, such as savings in computation. They are generally more difficult to implement. Computing
Discrete Multi-wavelet Transform, scalar wavelet transform can be written as follows:

( )
(
(
(
(
3 2 1 0
3 2 1 0
3 2 1 0
1 3 2 1 0
G G G G 0 0
H H H H 0 0
0 ... 0 G G G G
0 0 H H H H

Where H
i
and Gi are low and high pass filter impulse responses, are 2-by-2 matrices which can be
written as follows:

(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(
(
... G G G G 0 0 0 0
.... G G G G 0 0 0 0
.... H H H H 0 0 0 0
... H H H H 0 0 0 0
... ... ... ... ... G G G G
... ... ... ... ... G G G G
... ... ... ... ... H H H H
... ... ... ... ... H H H H
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0

By examining the transform matrices of the scalar wavelet and multi-wavelets, it is observed
that in multi-wavelets transform domain there are first and second low-pass coefficients followed by
first and second high pass filter coefficients rather than one lowpass coefficient followed by one high
pass coefficient. Therefore, if we separate these four coefficients, there are four sub bands in the
transform domain. Since multi-wavelet decompositions produce two low-pass sub bands and two high
pass sub bands in each dimension, the organization and statistics of multiwavelet sub band differ from
the scalar wavelet case.

Figure 5: Image decomposition after a single level scaling for (a) Scalar wavelets and (b) multi-
wavelets.

.

Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

Figure 6: Conventional iteration of multiwavelet decomposition.

During a single level of decomposition using a scalar wavelet transform, the 2- D medical image
data is replaced by four blocks corresponding to the sub bands representing either low pass or high pass
in both dimensions. These sub bands are illustrated in Fig. 5. The sub band labels in Fig. 6 indicate
how the sub band data were generated. For example, the data in sub band LH was obtained from high
pass filtering of the rows and then low pass filtering of the columns. The multi-wavelets used here have
two channels, so there will be two sets of scaling coefficients and two sets of wavelet coefficients.
Since multiple iteration over the low pass data is desired, the scaling coefficients for the two channels
are stored together. Likewise, the wavelet coefficients for the two channels are also stored together.
The multi-wavelet decomposition sub bands are shown in Fig.6. For multi-wavelets the L and H have
subscripts denoting the channel to which the data corresponds. For example, the sub band labeled
L1H2 corresponds to data from the second channel high pass filter in the horizontal direction and the
first channel low pass filter in the vertical direction. This shows how a single level of decomposition is
done. In practice, there is more than one decomposition performed on the medical image. Successive
iterations are performed on the low pass coefficients from the pervious stage to further reduce the
number of low pass coefficients. Since the low pass coefficients contain most of the original signal
Figure 6: Conventional iteration of multiwavelet decomposition., this iteration process yields better
energy compaction. After a certain number of iterations, the benefits gained in energy compaction
becomes rather negligible compared to the extra computational effort. Usually five levels of
decomposition are used. A single level of decomposition with a symmetric-antisymmetric multi-
wavelet is roughly equivalent to two levels of wavelet decomposition. Thus a 3level multiwavelet
decomposition effectively corresponds to 6- level scalar wavelet decomposition.

The scalar wavelet transform gives a single quarter-sized sub band from the original larger sub
band, as shown in fig 1. The multi-level decomposition is performed in the same way. The multi-
wavelet decomposition iterates on the low pass coefficients from the pervious decomposition, as shown
in Fig. 2. In the case of the scalar wavelets, the low pass quarter image is a single sub band. But when
the multi-wavelet transform is used, the quarter image of low pass coefficients is actually a 2 x 2 block
of sub bands (the L_Lj sub bands in Fig. 6. Due to the nature of the preprocessing and symmetric
extension method, data in these different sub bands becomes intermixed during iteration of the
multiwavelet transform. The intermixing of the multiwavelet low pass sub bands leads to suboptimal
results. Consider the multi-wavelets transform coefficients resulting from single-level decomposition.
It can be readily observed that the 2 x 2 "low pass" block (upper left corner) actually contains one low
pass sub band and three band pass sub bands.

The L1L1 sub band resembles a smaller version of the original image, which is a typical
characteristic of a true low pass sub band. In contrast, the L1L2, L2L1, and L2L2 sub bands seem to
process characteristics more like those of high sub bands. Also only L1L1 sub band contains
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

coefficients with a large DC value and a relatively uniform distribution. The L1, L1, H1 and H2 sub
bands, measured along the vertical direction. These description resolution in multiwavelet features are
considered as textural information and are used for image representation for image retrieval systems.
The proposed retrieval system is presented in next section.

4. System architecture

Figure 7:Block diagram for the proposed Hierarchal coding system

The Hierarchal Zero Wavelet output stream starts with information to synchronize the
decoder. The minimum information required by the decoder for its functionality is the number of
wavelet transforms levels used and the initial limit, basically a constant levels (3) of wavelet transform
were used for transformation. The first step in the Hierarchal Zero Wavelet coding algorithm is to
determine the initial limit. The initial limit t
0
is given as
( ) ( )

) y , x (max
2
log
0
2 t

= 3
where MAX(|
T
(x,y)|) means the maximum coefficient value in the image and (x,y) denotes the
coefficient. Then taking the obtained limit as the initial value the scaled sub-band samples are been
runed for initial run and intermediate run. Under each run the limit is decreased by half the value. This
comparison is carried out until the limit reaches to the minimum limit, the algorithm implemented is;
limit = initial_limit;
do {
initial_run(image);
intermediate_run(image);
limit = limit/2;
} while (limit > minimum_limit);

(A) Initial run
The image is scanned and a symbol is returned for every coefficient. If the coefficient is
larger than the limit a P is coded.

1. If the coefficient is smaller than negative of limit an N is coded.
2. If the coefficient is the root of a zero tree then a T is coded and finally,
3. If the coefficient is smaller than the limit but it is not the root of a zero tree, then a Z is coded. This
happens when the coefficient larger than the limit in the sub tree. Finally, all the coefficients that are
in positive value, larger than the current limit are extracted and placed without their sign on the
intermediate list and their positions in the image are filled with zeroes. This prevents them from
being coded again.
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

The initial run can thus be implemented as;
* Initial run
initialize_fifo();
while (fifo_not_empty)
{
get_coded_coefficient_from_fifo();
if coefficient was coded as P, N or Z then
{
code_next_scan_coefficient();
put_coded_coefficient_in_fifo();
if coefficient was coded as P or N then
{
add abs(coefficient) to intermediate list;
set coefficient position to zero;
}
}
}
After the initial run follows the intermediate run:
Intermediate run
intermediate_limit = current_limit/2;
for all elements on intermediate list do
{
if (coefficient > intermediate_limit)
{
output a one;
coefficient=coefficient intermediate_limit;
}
else output a zero;
}

If the limit used is a power of two, then the intermediate run reduces to a few logical
operations and can be made very fast. The decoding unit reconstructs the values by identifying the
symbols as positive, negative, zero tree and isolated zerotree. The reconstructed values are taken as
limit for positive coded coefficients and negative of limit for negative coded coefficients. The zerotree
coefficients and the isolated zerotree coefficients are assigned with 0 value.

5. Results observations

Input properties of more than 150 images are carried out and few cases are represented in table 1. The
corresponding images are also shown in fig 8. and Fig 9. Plot of PSNR comparison between wavelets
and multiwavelets is given in figure 10.

Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

Table 1. input properties of different two images

Figure 8. (A) Original image (B) Wavelet based output (C) multiwavelet output

Image
Name

Dimension

Bit
depth

Wavelet Based Compression

Multiwavelet Based
Compression

Compression
in %
Computation
Time
In Sec.
Mean
Square
Error
(MSE)
Compression
in %
Computation
Time
In Sec.
Mean
Square
Error
(MSE)
T-128 128x128

24 bits 35 23 0.18 67 07 0.1
T-256 256x256

24 bits 33 08 0.45 47 04 0.25
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

Figure 9. (A) Original image (B) Wavelet based output (C) multiwavelet based output

Figure.10. PSNR comparison plot

5. Conclusion
In this work it is observed that Hierarchical zero wavelet coding is able to achieve its
good performance with a relatively simple algorithm. Hierarchical zero wavelet coding does
not require complicated bit allocation procedures like subband coding does, it does not require
training or codebook storage like vector quantization does, and it does not require prior
knowledge of the image source like wavelet based compression does (to optimize quantization
tables). Hierarchical Zero Wavelet Coding also has the desirable property, resulting from its
successive approximation quantization.One desirable consequence of an embedded bit stream is
that it is very easy to generate coded outputs with the exact desired size. Truncation of the
Vol. 3, No.3, 2011

coded output stream does not produce visual artifacts since the truncation only eliminates the
least significant refinement bits of coefficients rather than eliminating entire coefficients as is
done in subband coding. From the obtained results it is concluded that Hierarchal Zero wavelet
coding takes comparatively less(about 60%) time then the Wavelet Based Compression coding
system. The coding also shows less percentage of error in compressed image compare to the
existing Wavelet Based Compression coding system. It is observed that image coded with
Hierarchal Zero Wavelet tree coding shows clearer image than other coding system.

VI. REFERENCES
[1]. J.Shapiro, Embedded image coding using zerotrees of wavelet coefficients, IEEE Trans.
Signal Processing, vol. 41, pp.3445-3462, Dec 1993.
[2] S.Mallat and F. Falzon, Analysis of low bit rate image transform coding, IEEE Trans.
Signal Processing, vol. 46, pp. 1027-1042, Apr. 1998.
[3] Z. Xiong, K . Ramchandran, and M. Orchad, Space-frequency quantization for wavelet
image coding, IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 6, pp. 677-693, May 1997.
[4] E. H. Adelson, E. Simoncelli, and R. Hingorani, Orthogonal pyramid transforms for image
coding, Proc. SPIE, vol. 845, Cambridge, MA, Oct. 1987, pp. 50-58.
[5] R. A. DeVore, B. Jawerth, and B. J. Lucier, Image compression through wavelet transform
coding, IEEE Trans. Informat. Theory, vol. 38, pp. 719-746, Mar. 1992.
[6] S. Mallat, A theory for multiresolution signal decomposition: The wavelet representation,
IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., vol. 37, pp.2091-2110, Dec.1990.
[7] G. K. Wallace, The JPEG Still Picture Compression Standard, Commun. ACM, vol. 34,
pp. 30-44, Apr. 1991.
[8] Bryan E. Usevitch, A Tutorial on Modern Lossy Wavelet Image Compression: Foundations of
JPEG 2000, IEEE signal processing magzine, 1053-5888,sep-2001.

Authors Profile

LalithaY.S was born on December 7, 1969 in India. She received B.E degree in
Electronics and Communication Engineering and M.E. degree in Power
Electronics from Gulbarga University Gulbarga, India, in 1991 and 2002
respectively. She is working as Principal, in Godutai Engineering college for
women, Gulbarga, India. Her research interests include image Processing, Wavelet
Transform coding. She attended Four National Conferences and three International
Conferences. Published 3 international journal papers.
Dr.Mrityunjaya V Latte was born on April 25
th
1964 in India. He received B.E.
degree in electrical Engineering and M.E. degree in Digital electronics from S.D.M. College of
Engineering & Technology, Dharwad, India in 1986 & 1995 respectively. He was awarded Ph.D.
degree in 2004 for his work in the area of digital signal processing. He is working as Principal, JSS
Academy of Technical Education, Bangalore, India. His research interests include coding, image
processing and multiresolution transforms. He received a best paper award for his paper in a national
conference NCSSS -2002 held at Coimbatore, India.

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