Progressive coding of medical volumetric data using three-dimensional integer wavelet packet transform

We examine progressive lossy to lossless compression of medical volumetric data using three-dimensional (3D) integer wavelet packet transforms and set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT). To achieve good lossy coding performance, we describe a 3D integer wavelet packet transform that allows implicit bit shifting of wavelet coefficients to approximate a 3D unitary transformation. We also address context modeling for efficient entropy coding within the SPIHT framework. Both lossy and lossless coding performance are better than those previously reported.