System for efficient and secure distribution of medical images on the Internet

Because of the high compressibility of the medical images, data compression is desirable for digital storage despite the availability of inexpensive hardware for mass storage. A progressive transmission algorithm with automatic security filtering features for on-line medical image distribution using Daubechies' wavelets has been developed and is discussed in this paper. The system is practical for real-world applications, processing and coding each 12-bit image of size 512 x 512 within 2 seconds on a Pentium Pro. Besides its exceptional speed, the security filter has demonstrated a remarkable accuracy in detecting sensitive textual information within current or digitized previous medical images. The algorithm is of linear run time.