Observer performance for JPEG vs. Wavelet image compression of x-ray coronary angiograms

Development of "filmless" cardiac catheterization laboratories is eminent. The problems of implementing a digital catheterization laboratory involve archiving large amounts of data per procedure and high transfer rates to retrieve previous procedures. Lossy compression can ccommodate these changes, but at the cost of possibly impairing detection of clinically important angiographic features. Our study involves the observer detection and classification of features in clinical images and the effects that JPEG and wavelet compression have on the detectability of these features. We found no significant degradation in human observer performance with 7:1 and 15:1 JPEG compressed images in 6 clinically relevant visual tasks. Human observer performance for wavelet compression degraded significantly for 2 out of 6 tasks at 7:1 compression and 4 out of 6 tasks at 19:1 compression.