Data Compression in the PACS Environment

A compression server in a PACS environment has to deal with images of different types and sizes. The images will flow into compression at different rates, ranging from 1-2 Mbytes/sec to 9.6Kbytes/sec. Additionally, the pattern of the flow can vary. Some images will enter compression in one block. Other images, especially large images (i.e., digitized film images) will enter compression as a series of blocks. Interleaving of blocks can also occur. For example, the first two blocks from a digitized X-ray film may enter compression followed by a block from a CT image followed by more blocks from the X-ray film.