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Main Authors: Mao, Yu, Wang, Jun, Guan, Nan, Xue, Chun Jason
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.18074
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author Mao, Yu
Wang, Jun
Guan, Nan
Xue, Chun Jason
author_facet Mao, Yu
Wang, Jun
Guan, Nan
Xue, Chun Jason
contents Whole-Slide Images (WSIs) have revolutionized medical analysis by presenting high-resolution images of the whole tissue slide. Despite avoiding the physical storage of the slides, WSIs require considerable data volume, which makes the storage and maintenance of WSI records costly and unsustainable. To this end, this work presents the first investigation of lossless compression of WSI images. Interestingly, we find that most existing compression methods fail to compress the WSI images effectively. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that the failure of existing compressors is mainly due to information irregularity in WSI images. To resolve this issue, we developed a simple yet effective lossless compressor called WISE, specifically designed for WSI images. WISE employs a hierarchical encoding strategy to extract effective bits, reducing the entropy of the image and then adopting a dictionary-based method to handle the irregular frequency patterns. Through extensive experiments, we show that WISE can effectively compress the gigapixel WSI images to 36 times on average and up to 136 times.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_18074
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WISE: A Framework for Gigapixel Whole-Slide-Image Lossless Compression
Mao, Yu
Wang, Jun
Guan, Nan
Xue, Chun Jason
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Whole-Slide Images (WSIs) have revolutionized medical analysis by presenting high-resolution images of the whole tissue slide. Despite avoiding the physical storage of the slides, WSIs require considerable data volume, which makes the storage and maintenance of WSI records costly and unsustainable. To this end, this work presents the first investigation of lossless compression of WSI images. Interestingly, we find that most existing compression methods fail to compress the WSI images effectively. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that the failure of existing compressors is mainly due to information irregularity in WSI images. To resolve this issue, we developed a simple yet effective lossless compressor called WISE, specifically designed for WSI images. WISE employs a hierarchical encoding strategy to extract effective bits, reducing the entropy of the image and then adopting a dictionary-based method to handle the irregular frequency patterns. Through extensive experiments, we show that WISE can effectively compress the gigapixel WSI images to 36 times on average and up to 136 times.
title WISE: A Framework for Gigapixel Whole-Slide-Image Lossless Compression
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.18074