Fractal Compression on Mammograms

Abstract

Mammography has been an effective and simple diagnostic method to detect the breast cancer in an early stage. In general, the suspicious region of the breast cancer or other abnormal symptom of breast occupies a bitty part of a mammogram. It takes 4MB storage space to archive the sampled part at spatial resolution 2047 X 2048 with 256 gray intensity. It is difficult to handle all patient mammograms in a picture archives and communication system for its incredible amount of storage space. Since the cloud-like tissue background of a mammogram almost appears the property of self similarity, the fractal compression technique is considered as a better solution to reduce its storage space. The results of the experiments show that it can cut down about 75% storage space for a block size of 4 X 4 and preserve image quality of average 35dB Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).