Dr. Chandler has recently been awarded funding from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology (OCAST) Health Research Program to study new ways of compressing medical images that preserve diagnostic utility.

Current medical image infrastructures rely on lossless compression, which simply does not offer enough compression efficiency to meet growing archival and transmission demands. By studying how radiologists perceive compression artifacts, and by integrating this knowledge into new compression technologies, Dr. Chandler and his team hope to offer much greater compression than is currently possible. Since medical images require long or indefinite retention periods, a reduction in storage space requirements could reduce expenses to a fraction of current costs. In addition, the technology will speed up image transmission and retrieval times, which will not only reduce turnaround time, but will also enhance the overall productivity of healthcare facilities.