Digitized hand-wrist radiographs: comparison of subjective and software-derived image quality at various compression ratios.

Introduction: The objectives of this study were to compare the effect of JPEG 2000 compression of hand-wrist radiographs on observer image quality qualitative assessment and to compare with a software-derived quantitative image quality index.

Methods: Fifteen hand-wrist radiographs were digitized and saved as TIFF and JPEG 2000 images at 4 levels of compression (20:1, 40:1, 60:1, and 80:1). The images, including rereads, were viewed by 13 orthodontic residents who determined the image quality rating on a scale of 1 to 5.