Quantification of image quality after photobleaching and image compression

摘要

Modern microscopic techniques, like High Content, High Throughput Screening (HCS), may involve collection ofthousands of images per experiment. Efficient image compression techniques are indispensable to manage these vastamounts of data. Such compression may be obtained with lossy compression algorithms such as JPEG and JPEG2000.However, these algorithms are optimised to preserve visual quality but not necessarily the integrity of the scientific data.Here, we propose three observer-independent compression algorithms, designed to preserve information contained inthe images. These algorithms were constructed using signal to noise ratio (SNR) computed from a single image as aquality measure to establish which image components may be discarded. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) was used in thisstudy to construct three lossy compression techniques, which preserve information contained in the images. Thecompression efficiency was measured as a function of image brightness (and SNR). Furthermore, the alterationsintroduced by compression were estimated using brightness histograms (earth’s mover distance algorithm) and textures(Haralick parameters).