2001 Volume 9 Issue 2 Pages 69-77
A medical image query system, including a relational database and DBMS (database management system), which can visualize image data and can achieve spatial, attribute, and mixed queries was designed and implemented. Image data used in querying can be visualized in slice, MPR (multi-planner reformat), volume rendering, and overlapping forms on the query system, in which queries with or without the brain atlas can be available. After image data are spatially clustered using the adaptive Hilbert curve, which is the space filling curve proposed in this paper, they are encoded and stored in the database without loss. In applying the adaptive Hilbert curve, the window size varies with the size of the region of interest (ROI) to reduce the size of the data to be stored. In the experiment, the adaptive Hilbert curve provided about a 10% better compression rate and about 77.4% better processing time than the Hilbert curve for the ventricle of the brain MR images. The results of spatial query with the brain atlas for a brain tumor case showed that the medical image query system is a useful tool for morphometric and functional analysis of brain images.
