Digital image compression in dermatology: format comparison.

Digital image compression (reduction of the amount of numeric data needed to represent a picture) is widely used in electronic storage and transmission devices. Few studies have compared the suitability of the different compression algorithms for dermatologic images. We aimed at comparing the performance of four popular compression formats, Tagged Image File (TIF), Portable Network Graphics (PNG), Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG), and JPEG2000 on clinical and videomicroscopic dermatologic images. Nineteen (19) clinical and 15 videomicroscopic digital images were compressed using JPEG and JPEG2000 at various compression factors and TIF and PNG. TIF and PNG are "lossless" formats (i.e., without alteration of the image), JPEG is "lossy" (the compressed image has a lower quality than the original), JPEG2000 has a lossless and a lossy mode. The quality of the compressed images was assessed subjectively (by three expert reviewers) and quantitatively (by measuring, point by point, the color differences from the original). Lossless JPEG2000 (49% compression) outperformed the other lossless algorithms, PNG and TIF (42% and 31% compression, respectively). Lossy JPEG2000 compression was slightly less efficient than JPEG, but preserved image quality much better, particularly at higher compression factors. For its good quality and compression ratio, JPEG2000 appears to be a good choice for clinical/videomicroscopic dermatologic image compression. Additionally, its diffusion and other features, such as the possibility of embedding metadata in the image file and to encode various parts of an image at different compression levels, make it perfectly suitable for the current needs of dermatology and teledermatology.