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A 2-D ECG Compression Method Based on Wavelet Transform and Modied SPIHT
Shen-Chuan Tai, Chia-Chun Sun*, and Wen-Chien Yan
AbstractA two-dimensional (2-D) wavelet-based electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression method is presented which employs a modied set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) algorithm. This modied SPIHT algorithm utilizes further the redundancy among medium- and high-frequency subbands of the wavelet coefcients and the proposed 2-D approach utilizes the fact that ECG signals generally show redundancy between adjacent beats and between adjacent samples. An ECG signal is cut and aligned to form a 2-D data array, and then 2-D wavelet transform and the modied SPIHT can be applied. Records selected from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database are tested. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves high compression ratio with relatively low distortion and is effective for various kinds of ECG morphologies. Index TermsElectrocardiogram (ECG) compression, set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT), wavelet transform.

I. INTRODUCTION

N electrocardiogram (ECG) is an important physiological signal for heart disease diagnosis. Because of the tremendous amount of ECG data generated each year, efcient methods for storing and retrieving ECG data are needed. Besides, how to efciently store and transmit ECG data in digital form becomes one of the important issues in the biomedical signal processing community. On the other hand, the characteristics of ECG waveforms are the keys to the diagnosis. For example, P wave, QRS complex, T wave, and PR interval represent the atrial depolarization, ventricular depolarization, ventricular repolarization, and AV conduction time, respectively. For this reason, a general goal of ECG data compression algorithms is to remove redundancy between ECG data while preserving required signal quality for clinical diagnosis. In recent years, many wavelet transform based ECG data compression techniques with low reconstruction error and ne visual quality have been proposed [1][13]. Most of these wavelet-based ECG Compression algorithms disregard the redundancy between adjacent heartbeats and apply wavelet transform directly to the acquired one-dimensional (1-D) ECG data. According to the techniques used in wavelet-coefcient encoding, these techniques can roughly be divided into three categories.
Manuscript received February 12, 2004; revised October 31, 2004. Asterisk indicates corresponding author. S.-C. Tai and W.-C. Yan are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: sctai@ mail.ncku.edu.tw; ywc@lily.ee.ncku.edu.tw). *C.-C. Sun is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1 Ta-Hsueh Road, Tainan 701, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: sun@lily.ee.ncku.edu.tw). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TBME.2005.846727

1) Threshold methods: wavelet coefcients are compared to some certain thresholds, and those that below the thresholds are discarded [10], [12]. 2) Vector quantization methods: vector quantization (e.g., dynamic vector quantization) is applied to the encoding of wavelet coefcients [13]. 3) Embedded zero tree (EZW) or SPIHT methods: wavelet coefcients are encoded using the concepts of the EZW or the set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) algorithm [7][9], [11]. By observing the ECG waveforms, a fact can be concluded that the heartbeat signals generally show considerable similarity between adjacent heartbeats, along with short-term correlation between adjacent samples. However, most existing ECG compression techniques did not utilize such correlation between adjacent heartbeats. A compression scheme using two-dimensional (2-D) transformation (e.g., DCT, DWT) is an option to employ the correlation between adjacent heartbeats and can thus further improve the compression efciency. Lee and Buckley proposed a 2-D DCT based ECG compression method using cut and align beats approach [14]. Uyar and Ider proposed a 2-D DCT based compression algorithm for exercise ECG data [15]. Moghaddam and Nayebi presented a 2-D wavelet packet ECG compression approach [16]. Bilgin et al. proposed a 2-D wavelet based ECG compression method using the JPEG2000 image compression standard [17]. These 2-D ECG compression methods consist of following steps: 1) QRS detection, 2) preprocessing (cut and align beats, period normalization, amplitude normalization, mean removal), 3) transformation, and 4) coefcient encoding. Table I shows a comparison of these four methods. Generally, Period normalization helps utilizing the interbeat correlation but incurs some quantization errors. Mean removal helps maximizing the interbeat correlation since dc value of each beat is different due to baseline change. In this paper, we propose a 2-D approach for ECG compression that utilizes the redundancy between adjacent heartbeats. The QRS complex in each heartbeat is detected for slicing and aligning a 1-D ECG signal to a 2-D data array, and then 2-D wavelet transform is applied to the constructed 2-D data array. Finally, a modied SPIHT algorithm is applied to the resulting wavelet coefcients for further compression. The way that the proposed algorithm differs from other 2-D algorithms is that the proposed algorithm not only utilizes the interbeat correlation but also employs the correlation among coefcients in relative subbands. This paper is organized as follows: Brief introductions to the SPIHT and the modied SPIHT algorithm are presented in Sections II and III, respectively. The proposed method is described in Section IV. In Section V, the proposed

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TABLE I COMPARISON OF 2-D ECG COMPRESSION ALGORITHMS

method is tested using selected records from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and the simulation results are compared with other methods. Finally, a conclusion will be given in Section VI. II. SHORT SUMMARY OF SPIHT The SPIHT algorithm, introduced by Said and Pearlman [19], is an efcient method for both lossy and loss-less natural image coding. The SPIHT algorithm adopts a hierarchical quad-tree data structure on a wavelet-transformed image. The energy of a wavelet-transformed image is centered on the low-frequency coefcients and the coefcients are ordered in hierarchies and have a parent-child relationship through subbands. By utilizing this relationship, the SPIHT algorithm saves many bits from representing insignicant coefcients. The coding procedure of the SPIHT algorithm is briey described as follows. The SPIHT algorithm can be dened recursively using a sequence of thresholds. Detailed description of the SPIHT algorithm can be found in [19]. 1) Initialization: Set the list of signicant points (LSP) as empty. Set the roots of similarity trees in the list of insignicant points (LIP) and the list of the inwith signicant sets (LIS). Set the threshold , where denotes the . coefcient at position 2) Sorting pass in LIP: Each coefcient in the LIP is checked and the signicant coefcients are moved to the LSP. The sign bits of the signicant coefcients are encoded. 3) Sorting pass in LIS: If an entry in the LIS is signicant, a one is sent and then its two offspring are checked like an entry in the LIP. If an entry in the LIS is insignicant, a zero is sent.

4) Renement pass: Each old entry of LSP is checked. If it is signicant under current threshold, a one is sent and its magnitude reduced by the current threshold. If it is insignicant, a zero is sent. III. MODIFIED SPIHT ALGORITHM After wavelet decomposition, the energy of an image is centered on the wavelet coefcients in the low-low band. Accordingly, the modied SPIHT algorithm divides a wavelettransformed image into three partitions

where indicates a wavelet coefcient at position . and represent low-frequency, middle-frePartitions , quency and high-frequency wavelet coefcients, respectively. Coefcients in partition are coded as the entries in the LSP in the original SPIHT algorithm. In partition , the modied SPIHT algorithm adopts a set to utilize the correlation among subbands of the same level, where indicates whether there is at least one coefcient signicant among the coefcients at , , and and their corresponding coordinates in descendants. If there is at least one coefcient signicant, then is set to one and the coefcients at corresponding coordi, , and would be sent to the decoder, nates in otherwise, nothing is sent. For other high-frequency coefcients in partition , the modied SPIHT algorithm further utilizes the redundancy among subbands. There are few signicant coefcients in this partition, and the original SPIHT algorithm suggests using one bit to represent whether there is a signicant coefcient is in a quad-tree.

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Fig. 1.

Block diagram of the proposed ECG compression method. (a) Encoder and (b) decoder.

A one indicates that there is at least one signicant coefcient in a quad-tree, and a zero represents all coefcients in a quad-tree are insignicant. According to the quad-tree concept, there is and , and , and correlation among and . Therefore, the modied SPIHT algorithm divides , , , , , into three subpartitions, , , 2, and 3

and aligned according to the results of QRS detection. The accuracy of a QRS detection method would affect the performance of the proposed algorithm. B. 2-D Array Construction and Block Segmentation The construction of a cut and aligned beat ECG data array is illustrated in Fig. 2. Using an appropriate QRS detection algorithm, an input ECG signal is QRS detected, and then cut and aligned every beats to form a 2-D array ( rows). To maximally utilize the beat to beat correlation, QRS complex should be properly aligned. The length of each heartbeat has to be preserved and sent to the decoder for signal reconstruction. Since the length of each beat is different, an appropriate number of zeros is padded to the end of each heartbeat data sequence (Because the length of each beat is preserved and sent to the decoder, the number of padded zeros need not be preserved for the decoding process.). The constructed 2-D array is then sliced blocks for 2-D wavelet every samples (columns) into decomposition. C. 2-D Wavelet Decomposition and Coefcients Encoding Before applying 2-D wavelet decomposition to each block, mean removal is performed on each block to reduce the number of signicant wavelet coefcients. Each mean-removed block is then decomposed by using the Daubechies (Db8) wavelet. The wavelet coefcients of each block are then encoded using the modied SPIHT algorithm and stored for the reconstruction of the ECG signal. In order to reconstruct the ECG waveforms, the compressed data must include the following items: 1) associated beat length information; 2) mean value of each block; 3) encoded bit stream of MSPIHT. Beat length information is dened as the length of each heartbeat cycle, (e.g., the duration between adjacent peaks), and is utilized for ECG period recovery. Mean value of each block must be stored for reconstructing the amplitude of the segmented ECG data. The encoded bit stream of MSPIHT contains signicant information for regenerating each

A subpartition is signicant if there is at least one coefcient signicant in the corresponding subbands. The bitmap of a signicant subpartition is encoded to indicate the positions of signicant coefcients. The sign information of signicant coefcients is also encoded. A more detailed description of the modied SPIHT algorithm can be found in [18]. IV. PROPOSED METHOD Heart beat signals generally show considerable similarity between adjacent beats, along with short-term correlation between adjacent samples. According to this observation, employing temporal beat alignment method may lead to more efcient ECG compression methods. Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of the proposed algorithm. In summary, the proposed algorithm is implemented in the following steps. 1) QRS detection of the 1-D ECG signal. 2) 2-D ECG data array construction and block segmentation. 3) Wavelet decomposition and coefcients encoding. Below we will describe each of these steps. A. QRS Detection In order to utilize the correlation among adjacent heart beats, the input 1-D ECG signal have to be segmented and aligned properly. Therefore, the input 1-D ECG signal has to be QRS detected and then the original 1-D ECG signal can be segmented

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TABLE II CORRELATION AMONG MIDDLE-FREQUENCY SUB-BANDS, WITH VARIOUS BLOCK SIZES FOR ALL RECORDS IN THE MIT-BIH DATABASE

The sample rate and the resolution are 360 Hz and 11 bits, and hence total bit-rate is 3960 bps. The distortion between the original and the reconstructed signal was measured by percent root mean square difference (PRD). PRD is easy to calculate and compare, and is widely used in the ECG compression literature. The PRD is given by

(3)

Fig. 2. Construction of a 2-D ECG data array. (a) Original ECG data sequence, (b) cut and aligned ECG data, (c) gray scale mapping of a 2-D ECG data array, and (d) 2-D array segmented into blocks.

block and forms the major part of the compressed data for signal reconstruction. V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS This section describes the results of several experiments that verify the effectiveness of the proposed 2-D wavelet-based ECG data compression algorithm. The proposed algorithm is also compared to other ECG coders with their reported performance in the literature. The proposed algorithm was tested and evaluated using 11 selected records from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. The record numbers for the test dataset are 100, 101, 102, 103, 107, 109, 111, 115, 117, 118, and 119. These datasets were chosen because they were used in earlier studies, and allow us to compare the performance of the proposed method with others. We compressed 10 min of data from each of theses records for various compression ratios and compared the performance with other existing algorithms.

denotes the original data, denotes the reconwhere structed data, and , the number of samples. Since a baseline of 1024 is added for the storage purpose in the MIT-BIH database, in a level of 1024 is subtracted from each sample to give the PRD formula. The performance of the proposed algorithm was compared with two 2-D ECG compression algorithms and several wavelet-based ECG compression algorithms. The compression ratio (CR) is calculated as the number of bits in the original signal over the number of bits in the compressed signal. In the rst experiment, we will see redundancy among subbands and an appropriate wavelet decomposition level will be decided. All records in the MIT-BIH database were tested and the statistics for interband correlation were gathered. Table II , , and (partition shows the correlation among ) for 3-level decomposition along with the correlation among , , and for 4-level decomposition. Table III shows and for 3-level the correlation among LH bands ( , , and for 4-level decomposidecomposition or tion), HL bands and HH bands. The modied SPIHT algorithm was designed to utilize the interband correlation to achieve better compression performance. As shown in Tables II and III, the 3-level decomposition produces a smaller percentage of signicant coefcients. For instance, for a 32 256 block size, there are 49% middle-frequency coefcients signicant for the

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TABLE III CORRELATION AMONG HIGH-FREQUENCY SUB-BANDS, WITH VARIOUS BLOCK SIZES FOR ALL RECORDS IN THE MIT-BIH DATABASE

TABLE IV PERFORMANCE COMPARISON (PRD) OF THE ORIGINAL SPIHT AND THE MODIFIED SPIHT ALGORITHM WITH BLOCK SIZE 32 32

3-level decomposition ( ). For the 4-level decomposition, there are 61% middle-frequency ). coefcients signicant ( In the case of high-frequency subbands, there are 40% coef) cients signicant ( for the 3-level decomposition and 54% coefcients signi) for the cant ( 4-level decomposition. Obviously, there are fewer interband correlation and more signicant coefcients for the 4-level wavelet decomposition. Therefore, in the proposed algorithm, the wavelet decomposition level is set to be 3. Since the modied SPIHT algorithm utilizes interband correlation well to improve coding efciency, it is reasonable to assume that the proposed algorithm achieves better performance with the modied SPIHT algorithm than with the original SPIHT algorithm. Table IV shows the performance comparison of the original SPIHT and the modied SPIHT algorithm. As shown in Table IV, even using a 32 32 block size that produce less interband correlation, the modied SPIHT algorithm outperforms the original SPIHT algorithm in the proposed method. In the second experiment, we veried the performance of the proposed algorithm with two different QRS detection schemes. The accuracy of the QRS detection process may affect the performance of a 2-D transform-based ECG compression method. Here we describe two existing QRS detection algorithms in the literature and discuss the inuence on the performance of the 2-D ECG compression method. The Okada algorithm [20] utilizes digital ltering techniques in the problem of QRS detection. The difference between 1) a three-point moving average of the ECG signal and 2) a low-pass ltering of the ECG signal is computed. The difference signal is then squared and multiplied by a nonlinearly ltered version of itself. False peaks can be removed by searching the output of the 3 point moving average lter for local peaks. Shubha et al. proposed a wavelet transform-based QRS complex detector [21]. In this

Fig. 3. The performance of the proposed algorithm with different block sizes using different QRS detection schemes (CR = 10).

method, a multiresolution approach is utilized. The input ECG signal is segmented and decomposed using dyadic wavelet

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TABLE V PERFORMANCE OF THE ECG COMPRESSION METHOD WITH/WITHOUT QRS DETECTION WITH BLOCK SIZE 32

2 256

transform. QRS complexes could be detected by tackling peaks across successive dyadic scales. The primary in its over existing techniques are 1) its advantages of the robust noise performance and 2) its exibility in analyzing the time-varying morphology of ECG data [21]. Fig. 3 shows the performance of the two QRS detection schemes described above with different block sizes. As shown in Fig. 3, the performance is better with larger block sizes. The result implies that smaller block sizes are more sensitive to the accuracy of QRS detection than larger block sizes. Fig. 3 also reveals that the performance begins to saturate at a 32 256 block size with an accurate QRS detection scheme. According to the results shown in Fig. 3, a 32 256 block size is selected in the following experiments.Table V shows the compression performance with the above two QRS detection techniques and without QRS detection. Without applying QRS detection, the 1-D ECG data is sliced and aligned every 512 samples. If QRS detection is applied, the 1-D ECG data is sliced according to the ducial points detected. As shown in Table V, while no QRS detection is applied, the correlation between adjacent heartbeats can not be fully utilized, thus the performance is comparatively worse at high compression ratio. On the other hand, while at low compression ratio, the performance of the proposed method with QRS detection is a little worse than that without QRS detection. There are two probable reasons that may lead to such situation. The rst reason is that while no QRS detection is applied, there isnt any side information (beat length) needed to be sent. Therefore, many bits are saved especially at low compression ratio. In other words, more bits can be used for encoding the wavelet coefcients. Second, the average beat length of the tested ECG records of the MIT-BIT

database according to the results of QRS detection is about 250 samples, which implies that the length of segmentation (512 samples) we adopted is about twice the detected average beat length, i.e., the ECG data is somewhat aligned. According to the results listed in Table V, we adopt the wavelet based QRS detector throughout the rest of this paper. The objective of the third experiment is to verify the effect of block size on the performance of the proposed algorithm. All 11 selected records in the test dataset were used as test signals. Because the wavelet decomposition level is 3, the block size is chosen to be a multiple of 8. Each beat length is presented using block is 10 bits, and the extracted mean value of each presented using 9 bits.Table VI shows the compression ratios for various block sizes with identical PRD values for the selected records from the MIT-BIH database. The results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is better with a large block size and the results remain consistent with different ECG signals. According to the results shown in Table VI and Fig. 3, a 32 256 block size is recommended since with accurate QRS detection, the performance of the proposed algorithm will not improve signicantly with a block size larger than 32 256. In the fourth experiment, the proposed algorithm was compared with two 2-D ECG compression algorithms. The rst 2-D algorithm was proposed by Lee and Buckley in 1999, which is a 2-D DCT based algorithm [14]. The algorithm proposed by Lee is tested on ECG signals with 12-b resolution and 250-Hz sampling rate and the block size used is 32 32. Therefore, the comparison was carried out using two selected records 100 and 119 from the MIT-BIH database (all signals were converted to 12-b resolution and a 250-Hz sampling rate) and the result is shown in Table VII. The second 2-D algorithm was proposed

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TABLE VI CRS FOR DIFFERENT BLOCK SIZES OF THE 11 SELECTED RECORDS FROM THE MIT-BIH DATABASE

TABLE VII COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED ALGORITHM AND THE 2-D DCT BASED ALGORITHM WITH BLOCK SIZE 32

2 32

by Bilgin et al. in 2003, which apply the well known JPEG2000 image coding standard on the ECG compression [17]. Identical dataset was used in the experiment and the result is shown in Fig. 4. The results show that the proposed algorithm has better performance than other 2-D algorithms.

In the fth experiment, the proposed method was compared with other wavelet-based algorithms [1], [4], [7], [9]. The test dataset containing 11 selected records of the MIT-BIH database was encoded to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Fig. 5 shows the PRD values versus compression ratios

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TABLE VIII AVERAGE PRDS

OF ALL RECORDS IN THE MIT-BIH DIFFERENT COMPRESSION RATIOS

DATABASE WITH

Fig. 4. Comparison of performance of the proposed algorithm and other algorithms in the literature.

Fig. 6. Original and reconstructed ECG signal of MIT-BIH record 102. (a) The : , block size original signal. (b) Reconstructed signal at 200 bps ( 32 256). (c) Error signal.

PRD = 2 53%

Fig. 5. PRD versus CR of selected records of the MIT-BIT database.

for each record of the test dataset with a 32 256 block size. We can see in Fig. 5 that the results for all test records are close to each other. This implies that the proposed method is suitable for various morphologies of ECG data. The average PRD values of this experiment are presented in Fig. 4. A comparison between the wavelet-based SPIHT ECG coder [7], the EZW ECG coder [9], and the proposed method is also given in Fig. 4. The results show that the proposed method outperforms the other two coders, especially at high compression ratio. There are two reasons that make the proposed algorithm perform better. The rst reason is that the proposed method utilizes the interbeat correlation of ECG signals using a 2-D strategy. The second reason

is that the modied SPIHT algorithm used in the proposed algorithm further utilizes the interband correlation of the wavelet transformed 2-D array. All other records in the MIT-BIH database were also tested and the averages are listed in Table VIII. There are other wavelet-based coders presented in the literature. Hilton [4] reported the PRD value of 2.6% with CR 8:1 for record 117 and compared with the best previous coder reported in [1] of 3.9%. Lu [7] reported the PRD value of 1.18% for the same record and CR. The PRD value of the proposed method is 0.94% for the same record and CR, which is considered better than the coders in [1], [4], and [7]. To reveal the visual quality of the reconstructed signals, 1500 samples of the original signal and the reconstructed signals decoded at bit-rates of 200 of

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Fig. 7. Original and reconstructed ECG signal of MIT-BIH record 107. (a) The : , block size original signal. (b) Reconstructed signal at 200 bps ( 32 256). (c) Error signal.

PRD = 3 5%

Fig. 9.Original and reconstructed ECG signal of MIT-BIH record 119. (a) The , block size original signal. (b) Reconstructed signal at 200 bps ( : 32 256). (c) Error signal.

PRD = 2 35%

selected records are reproduced in Figs. 69, respectively. The reconstructed and original signals were examined by two cardiologists and they were asked if there are major errors that will affect the clinical diagnosis in the reconstructed signals. They commented that all the clinical information is preserved. As can be seen in Figs. 69, the characteristic features are well preserved in the reconstructed signals and the error signals are almost uniformly distributed. The main effect of the proposed algorithm is the smoothing of background noise. VI. CONCLUSION In this paper, we proposed a 2-D wavelet-based ECG compression approach, which utilized the long-term and short-term correlation of heartbeat signals. By coding several records in the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database, the performance of the proposed method was tested. The performance of the proposed method was also compared with several wavelet-based ECG coders. The results show that the 2-D method proposed performed better than the 1-D methods in the literature. The experimental results also show that the proposed method has better performance than other 2-D methods for utilizing interband correlation of the wavelet transformed 2-D array. The experiments showed that the performance of a QRS detection scheme may greatly affect the performance of a 2-D ECG compression method. Besides, the performance of a QRS detector is affected by various noises and by varying morphologies. Therefore, an accurate QRS detector invariant to different noise sources and varying morphologies is essential to the proposed

Fig. 8. Original and reconstructed ECG signal of MIT-BIH record 111. (a) The original signal. (b) Reconstructed signal at 200 bps ( : , block size 32 256). (c) Error signal.

PRD = 3 9%

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method. Continuing our research, we will try to nd an accurate wavelet based QRS detection scheme which can integrate with the latter wavelet decomposition stage. REFERENCES
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[18] S.-C. Tai, Y.-Y. Chen, and W.-C. Yan, New high-delity medical image compression based on modied set partitioning in hierarchical trees, Opt. Eng., vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 19561963, Jul. 2003. [19] A. Said and W. A. Pearlman, A new, fast, and efcient image codec based on set partitioning in hierarchical trees, IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 243250, Jun. 1996. [20] M. Okada, A digital lter for the QRS complex detection, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. BME-26, no. 12, pp. 700703, Dec. 1979. [21] S. Kadambe, R. Murray, and G. F. Boudreaux-Bartels, Wavelet transform-based QRS complex detector, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. 46, no. 7, Jul. 1999.

Shen-Chuan Tai received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1982 and 1986, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 1989. He is currently a Professor of electrical engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chen Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. His teaching and research interests include data compression, DSP VLSI array processors, computerized electrocardiogram processing, multimedia systems, and algorithms.

Chia-Chun Sun was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1974. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the National Chen Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 1996 and 1998, respectively. Currently, he is a Ph.D. degree candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chen Kung University, Tainan. His research interests include data compression and computerized electrocardiogram processing.

Wen-Chien Yan received the B.S. degree in information and computer engineering from the Chung Yung Christian University, Chung Li, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 2001. She received the M.S. degree from the National Chen Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 2003. Her research interests include image compression and image processing.