Lossless compression for 3D PET

A new adaptive scheme is proposed for the lossless compression of positron emission tomography (PET) sinogram data. The algorithm uses an adaptive differential pulse code modulator (ADPCM) followed by a universal variable length coder (UVLC). Contrasting with Lempel-Ziv (LZ), which operates on a whole sinogram, UVLC operates very efficiently on short data blocks. This is a major advantage for real-time implementation. The algorithm is adaptive and codes data after some on-line estimations of the statistics inside each block. Its efficiency is tested when coding dynamic and static scans from two PET scanners and reaches asymptotically the entropy limit for long frames. For very short 3D frames, the new algorithm is twice more efficient than LZ. Since an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) implementing a similar UVLC scheme is available today, a similar one should be able to sustain PET data lossless compression and decompression at a rate of 27 MBytes/sec. This algorithm is consequently a good candidate for the next generation of lossless compression engine