A method and an apparatus for providing lossy compression of digital images
on a per image basis. The system user is able to manually vary the degree
or level of compression applied to a frozen image frame using a rotary
dial. Each resulting compressed image can be viewed in real-time on the
display monitor. The user must determine the highest compression level
which still provides an image having sufficient diagnostic quality in the
region of interest. This concept can be applied to any imaging device
which stores images in internal memory or sends images for storage to
external memory.
