Effect of data compression on diagnostic accuracy in digital chest radiography

Because high-resolution digital images are slow to transmit and expensive to store, data compression techniques are being developed. To determine the highest compression rate that can provide acceptable image quality with existing technology, we evaluated a new compression technique called adaptive block cosine transform coding. Twelve radiologists interpreted 60 digitized chest radiographs with a variety of subtle abnormalities. The authors compare diagnostic accuracy with no compression, 25:1 compression, and 50:1 compression. Preliminary results suggest that compression as high as 25:1 may be acceptable for chest radiographs