Objectives: This report describes whether lossy Joint Photographic Experts Group (UPEG) image compression/decompression has an effect on the quantitative assessment of vessel sizes by state-of-the-art quantitative coronary arteriography (QCA).
Background: The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) digital exchange standard for angiocardiography prescribes that images must be stored loss free, thereby limiting JPEG compression to a maximum ratio of 2:1. For practical purposes it would be desirable to increase the compression ratio (CR), which would lead to lossy image compression.
Methods: A series of 48 obstructed coronary segments were compressed/decompressed at CR 1:1 (uncompressed), 6:1, 10:1 and 16:1 and analyzed blindly and in random order using the QCA-CMS analytical software. Similar catheter and vessel start- and end-points were used within each image quartet, respectively. All measurements were repeated after several weeks using newly selected start- and end-points. Three different sub-analyses were carried out: the intra-observer, fixed inter-compression and variable inter-compression analyses, with increasing potential error sources, respectively.
Results: The intra-observer analysis showed significant systematic and random errors in the calibration factor at JPEG CR 10:1. The fixed inter-compression analysis demonstrated systematic errors in the calibration factor and recalculated vessel parameter results at CR 16:1 and for the random errors at CR 10:1 and 16:1. The variable inter-compression analysis presented systematic and random errors in the calibration factor and recalculated parameter results at CR 10:1 and 16:1. Any negative effect at CR 6:1 was found only for the calibration factor of the variable inter-compression analysis, which did not show up in the final vessel measurements.
Conclusions: Compression ratios of 10:1 and 16:1 affected the QCA results negatively and therefore should not be used in clinical research studies.