A radiologist from a well-known research hospital recently attended a medical conference a...

A radiologist from a well-known research hospital recently attended a medical conference at which a system that could transmit 4096 × 4096 12-bit digitized X-ray images over standard T1 (1.544 Mb/s) phone lines was exhibited. The system transmitted the images in a compressed form using a progressive technique in which a reasonably good approximation of the X-ray was first reconstructed at the viewing station and then refined gradually to produce an error-free display. The transmission of the data needed to generate the first approximation took approximately 5 or 6 s. Refinements were made every 5 or 6 s (on the average) for the next 1 min, with the first and last refinements having the most and least significant impact on the reconstructed X-ray, respectively. The physician was favorably impressed with the system, because she could begin her diagnosis by using the first approximation of the X-ray and complete it as the error-free reconstruction of the X-ray was being generated. Upon returning to her office, she submitted a purchase request to the hospital administrator. Unfortunately, the hospital was on a relatively tight budget, which recently had been stretched thinner by the hiring of an aspiring young electrical engineering graduate. To appease the radiologist, the administrator gave the young engineer the task of designing such a system. (He thought it might be cheaper to design and build a similar system in-house. The hospital currently owned some of the elements of such a system, but the transmission of the raw X-ray data took more than 2 min.) The administrator asked the engineer to have an initial block diagram by the afternoon staff meeting. With little time and only a copy of Digital Image Processing from his recent school days in hand, the engineer was able to devise conceptually a system to satisfy the transmission and associated compression requirements. Construct a conceptual block diagram of such a system, specifying the compression techniques you would recommend.