Processing of content-based compressed images

• US 20080232699A1
• Filed: 03/19/2007
• Published: 09/25/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/19/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Avinash, Gopal Biligeri, Gering, David Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 8,121,417 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/232
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/548 Remote control of the apparatus or devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/12 Selection from among a plurality of transforms or standards, e.g. selection between discrete cosine transform [DCT] and sub-band transform or selection between H.263 and H.264
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/132 Sampling, masking or truncation of coding units, e.g. adaptive resampling, frame skipping, frame interpolation or high-frequency transform coefficient masking
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/154 Measured or subjectively estimated visual quality after decoding, e.g. measurement of distortion use of rate-distortion criteria H04N19/147
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/162 User input
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/17 the unit being an image region, e.g. an object
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/426 using memory downsizing methods
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/59 involving spatial sub-sampling or interpolation, e.g. alteration of picture size or resolution
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/63 using sub-band based transform, e.g. wavelets

Abstract

A technique for prioritizing portions of compressed multi-resolution medical image data to be processed. More relevant portions of medical image data are compressed at a higher resolution than less relevant portions of medical image data. A mask is created from the image data and used to assign data compression quality factors to corresponding image blocks in the image data. The image data in each region is compressed based on their assigned quality factor. During processing of the compressed image data, the compressed image data and the mask are accessed. The mask is used to direct the processing of the compressed image data. Depending upon the application, the mask can be used to direct that the image data for the regions of most relevance be processed before the image data for the regions of lesser relevance. However, the mask can be used to direct that the image data for the regions of lesser relevance be processed before the image data for the regions of most relevance.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for processing image data, comprising:

accessing compressed image data comprising a plurality of resolution levels of compressed image data, wherein at least one resolution level of compressed image data comprises a first region of image data compressed with a first data compression and a second region of image data compressed with a second data compression, the second data compression being different than the first data compression;

accessing a mask, wherein a first region of the mask corresponding to the first region of image data is labeled with a first identifier and a second region of the mask corresponding to the second region of image data is labeled with a second identifier; and

selectively processing the first region and the second region of the image data based on the identifiers in the mask.

2. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, wherein selectively processing the first region and the second region of the compressed image data comprises modifying a parameter of a processing algorithm based on the identifiers in the mask.

3. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, wherein selectively processing the first region and the second region of the image data based on the identifiers in the mask comprises processing the first region of image data before processing the second region of image data.

4. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 3, wherein the first region of image data has a greater resolution than the second region of image data.

5. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, wherein accessing compressed image data comprises decompressing the at least one resolution level of compressed image data.

6. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 5, wherein the mask comprises a plurality of resolution levels of compressed mask data and accessing a mask comprises decompressing compressed mask data having a resolution level corresponding to the at least one resolution level of compressed image data.

7. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, wherein accessing compressed image data and accessing a mask comprises accessing the compressed image data and the mask from long-term data storage.

8. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, wherein the compressed image data and the mask comprise three-dimensional image data.

9. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, wherein the first data compression comprises lossless data compression.

10. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 9, wherein the second data compression comprises lossy data compression.

11. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, wherein the identifiers comprise a plurality of compression quality factors, a first compression quality factor corresponding to the first identifier and a second compression quality factor corresponding to the second identifier.

12. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 1, comprising creating the mask based on a purpose for obtaining image data.

13. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 12, wherein creating the mask comprises selecting the purpose for obtaining the image data from among a selection of purposes.

20. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 12, wherein the compressed image data and the multi-resolution mask comprise three-dimensional image data.

14. A computer-implemented method for processing image data, comprising:

accessing a first resolution level of compressed image data comprising a plurality of resolution levels of compressed image data;

accessing a first resolution level of a multi-resolution mask corresponding to the first resolution level of the compressed image data, wherein a first region of the multi-resolution mask corresponds to a first region of the compressed image data and a second region of the multi-resolution mask corresponds to a second region of the compressed image data; and

processing the image data using the mask as a guide to process the first region of image data before processing the second region of image data.

15. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 14, wherein the first region of image data has a greater resolution than the second region of image data.

16. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 15, wherein the first region of image data comprises image data compressed using lossless data compression.

17. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 16, wherein the second region of image data comprises image data compressed using lossy data compression.

18. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 15, wherein processing the compressed image data comprises transmitting the first region of compressed image data before transmitting the second region of compressed image data.

19. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 15, wherein accessing a first resolution level of compressed image data comprising a plurality of resolution levels of compressed image data comprises decompressing the first resolution level of compressed image data.

21. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 14, wherein the multi-resolution mask comprises a plurality of compression quality factors, a first compression quality factor corresponding to the first region of compressed image data and a second compression quality factor corresponding to the second region of compressed image data.

22. A computer-implemented method for processing image data, comprising:

accessing a first level of decomposed image data of a plurality of levels of decomposed image data, wherein each level of decomposed image data comprises a first region of image data having a first resolution and a second region of image data having a second resolution, the first resolution being greater than the second resolution;

processing the first region of image data of the first level of decomposed image data based on a mask defining the first region of decomposed image data;

accessing a second level of decomposed image data if processing the first region of image data produces a desired value, wherein the second level of decomposed image data has a greater resolution than the first level of decomposed image data; and

processing the first region of image data of the second level of decomposed image data based on a mask defining the first region of the second level of decomposed image data.

23. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 22, comprising:

accessing a first resolution level of a multi-resolution mask corresponding to the first level of the decomposed image data, wherein the first resolution level of the multi-resolution mask comprises a first region corresponding to the first region of the first level of the decomposed image data and a second region corresponding to the second region of the first level of the decomposed image data.

24. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 23, comprising:

accessing a second resolution level of a multi-resolution mask corresponding to the second level of the decomposed image data, wherein the second resolution level of the multi-resolution mask comprises a first region corresponding to the first region of the second level of the decomposed image data and a second region corresponding to the second region of the second level of the decomposed image data.

25. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 22, wherein the first region of each level of the plurality of levels of decomposed image data has a greater resolution than the second region of image data.

26. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 25, wherein the first region of each level of the plurality of levels of decomposed image data comprises image data compressed using lossless data compression.

27. The computer-implemented method for processing image data as recited in claim 26, wherein the second region of each level of the plurality of levels of decomposed image data comprises image data compressed using lossy data compression.