A Compression and Transmission System of Ultrasonic Image Sequence for Telemedicine

Abstract

This system was evaluated by transmitting the ultrasonic image sequence of the heart via ISDN (1. 5 mbps). Although this system completely specialized in compression and transmission of the ultrasound sector scan image sequence, a relatively good performance in the frame rate and the image quality was achieved, compared with the previous systems (H.260, JPEG, and MPEG-1).

Performance of a Web-based, realtime, tele-ultrasound consultation system over high-speed commercial telecommunication lines

“…All three lines maintained minimum downstream bit rates greater than the threshold value. One of the important factors affecting the quality of ultrasound images is the transmission rate of the communication line 2,5,6 . The present study shows that VDSL for both the transmitting and receiving units, and a cable connection for the receiving unit, were satisfactory, and did not demonstrate a significant difference between the compressed and original videoimages 9 .…”

“…Although many tele-ultrasound systems have been developed [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] , there are few systems that combine ultrasound video-transmission with videoconferencing. Videoconferencing may have a favourable effect on the consultation 7 .…”

“…Many tele-ultrasound systems have been developed with the aim of reducing medical costs and improving patient care [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . Managing the large quantity of data produced by dynamic imaging is a major technical challenge for a tele-ultrasound system, in contrast to other telemedicine applications, such as teleradiology, which handle only static two-dimensional images 1,5 .…”

“…Many tele-ultrasound systems have been developed with the aim of reducing medical costs and improving patient care [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . Managing the large quantity of data produced by dynamic imaging is a major technical challenge for a tele-ultrasound system, in contrast to other telemedicine applications, such as teleradiology, which handle only static two-dimensional images 1,5 . Since uncompressed dynamic ultrasound images occupy a bandwidth of about 70-100 Mbit/s 1 , efficient compression and operability over high-speed telecommunication lines are basic requirements of a practical tele-ultrasound system [1][2][3][4][5][6] .…”

“…The method by which the ultrasound images are encoded can influence both the required network bandwidth and the image quality. Although either videoconferencing (H.320) or MPEG-1 are generally employed in tele-ultrasound systems [1][2][3]5,6,8 , their spatial resolution is limited to 320£240 pixels. frames/s.…”