Development of Stereo PACS Viewer for the 3-D Endoscopic Image

Stereo PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) is not available yet because of some limitations of medical stereo image software and viewing devices. As a stereo PACS viewer, we designed two functions. One is selecting and viewing a multiplexed stereo image directly, and the other is selecting a stereo pair image (left and right sides both) and merging the stereo pair image into a multiplexed image in software. For the medical image compression of 3-D stereo endoscopic images, we used JPEG and Wavelet compression and to determine an acceptable compression rate using PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio). As a result, we got the conclusion that medically acceptable image compression rate should have the PSNR of above about 40[dB] (JPEG (5:1), Wavelet (10:1)).