Digital image compression should be limited in diabetic retinopathy screening

Abstract

Digital colour retinal photography is a useful modality for diabetic retinopathy screening. Unlike film photography, the size of the image depends on the resolution of the acquired image. With the availability of high-resolution digital cameras, larger images requiring greater storage-memory will inevitably be generated. Image compression may then be necessary so that these images can be viewed conveniently, archived and transmitted across computer networks. Unfortunately with the paucity of clinical studies on retinal image compression, more research is necessary to develop evaluation tools to identify optimum image compression ratios for diabetic retinopathy screening.