[Application study of JPEG2000 image compression in nuclear medicine].

To study the usefulness of JPEG2000 compression for nuclear medicine (NM) image, normal and abnormal static images were compressed using a JPEG2000 plug-in. For lossless algorithm, the compressing ratio (CR) was calculated. For lossy algorithm, images were visually analyzed by NM physicians and ROC curves were generated. The area under ROC curve (AUC) was used as the index of image diagnostic quality. Paired sample t tests were performed to compare the AUCs. It was found that the lossless CR was (1.34+/-0.05) : 1. For lossy algorithm, the AUC decreased with the increase of CR. Comparison between the original and the compressed images revealed no significant difference for 10:1 CR but significant difference for bigger CRs. It was concluded that lossless compression has little usefulness for NM image because of very low CR. While lossy compression isused, the diagnostic quality of static NM images is preserved at CRs 50 : 1,40 : 1, 30 : 1,20 : 1 up to 10 : 1. For other types of NM image, CR should be increased or decreased according to their characteristics, especially the level of intrinsic statistical noise of NM image.