Cast encoder core is ideal for medical imaging

This, along with its fast and compact design, is said to make the core an ideal lossy compression encoder for medical imaging, reconnaissance and other applications where exceptional image detail is required.

The 12-bit pixel depth of the ISO/IEC 10918-1 JPEG standard's extended sequential process is said to enable lossy compression of images with more detail than possible with conventional, baseline 8-bit JPEG.

Greyscale images with 12 bits of data per pixel are often used for medical images, and the encoder core conforms to the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine standard.

In addition to compressing images from 8 bits to 12 bits per colour sample, the encoder core can also compress non-standard motion JPEG streams.

An optional bit-rate control block makes the encoder suitable for applications with restricted bandwidth requirements.

The core is said to be versatile and competitive even against 8-bit only encoders.

For example, it can process 450Msamples/sec with only 69K gates in a typical Asic 0.09-micron process, or 280Msamples/sec in high-end FPGA devices, or even 30 frames per second of 16:9 HDTV 1,080p video in low-end FPGAs.