Revolutionising medical imaging internationally

A team of RMIT University researchers has developed cutting-edge technology that has the potential to revolutionise medical imaging internationally.

Compression techniques developed by Professor Henry Wu and his colleagues at RMIT’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering will enable radiologists to download, and transmit, medical images in half the time without compromising visual quality.

According to Professor Wu, the vision model based coding technology, which can compress medical image files by up to 46 per cent, has the capacity to boost efficiency in both everyday radiology practice and telemedicine, improving healthcare services to rural communities and other remote areas.

“Many major hospitals have reciprocal arrangements with healthcare providers overseas whereby experts can be consulted overnight. This technology will make diagnosis from medical images more efficient,” Professor Wu said.

He said that digital image processing and enhancing software developed by the research team to improve image clarity had “enormous” potential in medical imaging.

The software, which uses computer de-noising filters to clear images corrupted by visual noise such as the ‘snow effect’, has already proven a highly valuable forensic tool in police inquiries.

“X-ray images may be contaminated either in the imaging process or digitisation process,” Professor Wu said. “These image processing techniques can help to eliminate or reduce the noise and restore the image for medical record-keeping.”

RMIT’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering is installing new high grade medical image display facilities to expand research in this area. Clinical trials are expected to commence later this year.