Medical Ultrasound Video Coding with H.265/HEVC Based on ROI Extraction

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 11; no. 11; p. e0165698
• Main Authors: Wu, Yueying, Liu, Pengyu, Gao, Yuan, Jia, Kebin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 04.11.2016; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Clinical Coding - methods; Coding; Coding standards; Collaboration; Communications Media; Communications systems; Compression; Computer and Information Sciences; Data Compression - methods; Diagnostic systems; Efficiency; Engineering; Engineering and Technology; Feature extraction; Image coding; Image detection; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods; Innovations; International conferences; Internet; Laboratories; Medical diagnosis; Medical imaging equipment; Medical innovations; Medicine and Health Sciences; Optimization; Physical Sciences; Process parameters; Quality standards; Research and Analysis Methods; Signal processing; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Structural hierarchy; Ultrasonic imaging; Ultrasonography - methods; Ultrasound; Video communication; Video compression; Video Recording - methods; Video transmission
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0165698

High-efficiency video compression technology is of primary importance to the storage and transmission of digital medical video in modern medical communication systems. To further improve the compression performance of medical ultrasound video, two innovative technologies based on diagnostic region-of-interest (ROI) extraction using the high efficiency video coding (H.265/HEVC) standard are presented in this paper. First, an effective ROI extraction algorithm based on image textural features is proposed to strengthen the applicability of ROI detection results in the H.265/HEVC quad-tree coding structure. Second, a hierarchical coding method based on transform coefficient adjustment and a quantization parameter (QP) selection process is designed to implement the otherness encoding for ROIs and non-ROIs. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed optimization strategy significantly improves the coding performance by achieving a BD-BR reduction of 13.52% and a BD-PSNR gain of 1.16 dB on average compared to H.265/HEVC (HM15.0). The proposed medical video coding algorithm is expected to satisfy low bit-rate compression requirements for modern medical communication systems.