JP2001313944A - Image processor, image input device, system, image processing method and storage medium - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain effect which can encode only an image within a earget range (inside of a region) so as to decode with higher definition than that of the image in other ranges in the case of encoding the image of an eye to be examined. SOLUTION: An image processor is provided with an input means (1) to input the image, a setting means (6) to set the interested region in the image inputted from the input means, a code line generating means (2) which changes compression ratio in the interested region and other regions to encode and generates the code line, and a decoding means (2) to restore the image based on a storage means (3) to store the code line, and the code line stored by the storage means.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image input apparatus for inputting an image and / or information relating to the image to an external image processing apparatus, an image processing apparatus for compressing and encoding an image, and an image processing apparatus comprising the same. The present invention relates to a system, an image processing method, and a storage medium.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, there has been known an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus which takes an image of an eye to be inspected using an image pickup device such as a CCD instead of a silver halide film and records the image in a recording means. In addition, imaging means used for photographing have been remarkably advanced, and imaging means having extremely high resolving power have been commercialized one after another.

In recent years, there has been known an ophthalmological image processing apparatus for exclusively processing an eye image captured as an electronic image in order to meet various demands for an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus.

However, an improvement in the resolution in the spatial direction and the resolution in the density direction of the image pickup means can provide a high-quality image, but on the other hand, means a large amount of data, and is not suitable for diagnosis. Display speed and adversely affect management and operation after diagnosis.

[0004] In order to eliminate the adverse effect of the enormous amount of data, a method using image compression processing is conceivable. However, if the compression processing exceeds the limit, the image quality will significantly deteriorate,
Degradation of the image quality of a lesion that should be noted by a doctor may hinder accurate diagnosis.

In an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, particularly in a fundus photographing apparatus, it is known that there is an area called an aperture where an actual fundus image is not captured (hereinafter, an aperture mask section).

Further, the size of the aperture mask section depends on conditions such as the model of the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, photographing magnification, and the like.
It is known that the shape changes.

On the other hand, such an aperture mask portion is a region where image information of the eye to be examined does not exist, and capturing the aperture mask portion with high image quality is a very useless region from the viewpoint of reducing the amount of data. It can be said.

[0008] An ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, particularly a fundus photographing apparatus, is often used in the field of preventive medicine such as mass screening, and particularly important parts in an image may be fixed in advance depending on the purpose of the screening.

[0009] When a region to be noted is already fixed in a mass examination or the like, it is similarly inefficient to maintain high image quality outside the range to be noted. In a group examination for image interpretation, the display speed of an image is reduced.

The ophthalmologic photographing apparatus is used not only for diseases in the field of ophthalmology but also for diseases in other fields such as internal medicine, and there are many diseased parts which must be noticed by doctors. It is also known that there is a great demand for medical devices in general to be able to follow up on a lesion.

[0011] In addition, the part to be noticed by the doctor is greatly different depending on various diseases, and it is very complicated work to specify the part to be noticed for each image on the image. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and has been made to compress and encode only an image in a remarkable range (in an area) so as to be decoded with higher image quality than in other ranges. Aim.

[0012]

In order to achieve the object of the present invention, for example, an image processing apparatus of the present invention has the following arrangement. That is, an image processing apparatus that performs compression encoding on an image, comprising: input means for inputting the image; setting means for setting a region of interest in the image input from the input means; And performing compression encoding by changing the compression ratio between the other areas, a code string generating means for generating a code string, a storage means for storing the code string, and a code string stored in the storage means. Decoding means for restoring the image.

In order to achieve the object of the present invention, for example, an image input device of the present invention has the following arrangement. That is,
An image input apparatus for inputting an image and / or information related to the image to an external image processing apparatus, wherein the imaging unit generates the image by imaging, an imaging control unit that controls the imaging unit, An image input device comprising: a detection unit that detects the condition (1) as information on the image; and an input control unit that controls input of the image and / or information on the image to an external image processing device.

[0014]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail according to preferred embodiments with reference to the accompanying drawings.

[First Embodiment] FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an image processing apparatus according to the present embodiment.

An image input / output unit 1 receives an eye image (fundus image) taken by an external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus,
It functions as an interface that outputs an image to be output to the image display unit 5 via the image display control unit 4.

Reference numeral 2 denotes an image processing unit which performs compression and expansion processing on the image input to the image input / output unit 1.

Reference numeral 3 denotes an image recording unit which records the image processed by the image processing unit 2.

Reference numeral 4 denotes an image display control unit, which controls the display of a composite image, which will be described later.

An image display unit 5 displays an image output from the display control unit 4.

Reference numeral 6 denotes a region of interest setting unit.
The doctor designates a site (region of interest) to be noted with respect to the image input via the.

Reference numeral 7 denotes a region of interest storage unit for storing a region of interest (pattern).

An operation input unit 8 receives an operation input from a keyboard, a mouse or the like.

The image processing apparatus according to the present embodiment is constituted by the above-described respective units.

FIG. 2 shows a flowchart of a process in which the image processing apparatus sets a region of interest with respect to the image of the subject's eye captured by the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus. Hereinafter, the same process will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2 and FIG.

The flowchart shown in FIG. 2 includes a first region of interest setting step in which the operator arbitrarily sets the region of interest shown in steps S103 to S106, and step S10.
7, a second region of interest setting step of setting from a region of interest pattern registered in advance in the region of interest storage unit 7,
A selection step of selecting which of the first, second, and setting steps to use in step S102;
It comprises the compression processing execution steps 108 to S110.

When an image of the eye to be inspected taken by an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus such as a fundus camera is input to the image input / output unit 1, the input image of the eye to be inspected is transmitted to an image display unit 5 via an image display control unit 4.
(Step S101). FIG. 3A shows an eye image to be inspected input from the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus and output to the image display unit 5.

Next, the operator is asked to determine whether to arbitrarily select a region of interest (step S102). When the operator inputs an instruction of Yes through the operation input unit 8, the process proceeds to steps S103 and subsequent steps for arbitrarily setting a region of interest. The setting operation of the region of interest
When the operator operates a pointing device such as a mouse, coordinate information specified by the pointing device is transmitted to the image display control unit 4 via the operation input unit 7 and the region of interest setting unit 6. Then, the frame of the region of interest is synthesized and displayed as needed on the image of the eye to be inspected displayed on the image display unit 5 (step S104). For example, when setting the region of interest as a rectangle, a method known in applications that handle images, a method in which the mouse is moved from the upper left to the lower right of the rectangle with the mouse clicked, and the method is determined when the click is completed, may be used. In step S105, the end of the click is detected (pointing device detection), and steps S103 and S104 are repeated until the click is completed (until the setting of the region of interest is completed). The region of interest set by the above operation is shown by a dotted line region in FIG.

On the other hand, if it is determined in step S102 that the optional setting is not performed, the region-of-interest setting unit 6
A region of interest pattern registered in the region of interest storage unit 7 in advance is read. (Step S107) In the present embodiment, a pattern indicating a substantially fundus image effective area excluding the aperture mask portion on the fundus image is used as a pre-registered region of interest pattern, and a composite display of the fundus image and the region of interest pattern is used. The resulting image is shown in FIG.

When the region of interest is determined by any of the above two methods, the region of interest is set in the image processing unit 2 (step S108), and the parameter corresponding to the image quality (compression ratio) of the entire image and the region of interest are set. A parameter indicating a difference in image quality between the region and the non-interest region is set in the image processing unit 2 (step S109). Note that a configuration in which these two parameters are used while changing those registered in advance as necessary, or a configuration in which the operator sets each time can be considered.
Then, compression processing is started in the image processing unit 2 (step S110). Details of the processing in the image processing unit 2 will be described later.

In the flowchart shown in FIG.
Although the pre-registered pattern is unconditionally adopted in step S107, a step of determining whether to use the registered pattern may be used, or a plurality of patterns may be registered and any of the patterns may be registered. It may be determined whether to use. Also, the step of determining whether or not the region of interest is arbitrarily set in step S102 is arranged at the beginning of the flowchart.
First, a previously registered region of interest pattern is displayed, and only when the displayed region of interest pattern is not used, the process may proceed to step S103 and subsequent steps for arbitrary setting of the region of interest.

Next, an example of the configuration of the image processing section 2 will be described with reference to FIG.

The inside of the dotted line in FIG. 4 shows the configuration inside the image processing unit 2 and shows the path when the image data input to the image input / output unit 1 is compression-coded. 2A is a discrete wavelet transform unit, 2B is a quantization unit, 2C is an entropy encoding unit, 2D is a code output unit, and 2E is an area designation unit.

First, eye image data to be examined is input to the image input / output unit 1 in the raster scan order, and is input to the discrete wavelet transform unit 2A. In the following description, for the sake of convenience, the image signal of the eye to be inspected is monochrome (monochromatic) used in fluorescence imaging and the like.
Is a multi-valued image, but may be a normal color image,
In this case, the RGB color components may be compressed as the single color components.

The discrete wavelet transform unit 2A performs a two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform process on the input image, and calculates and outputs a transform coefficient. FIG. 5A shows a basic configuration of the discrete wavelet transform unit 2A. The input image is stored in the memory 101, and is sequentially read out by the processing unit 102 to perform a discrete wavelet transform process. The coefficients are written into the memory 101. In this embodiment, the configuration of the processing in the processing unit 101 is as shown in FIG.

In FIG. 3, an input image is separated into signals of even addresses and odd addresses by a combination of a delay element 103 and downsamplers 104a and 104b, and is subjected to filter processing by two filters p and u. FIGS. S and d show low-pass coefficients and high-pass coefficients when one-level decomposition is performed on a one-dimensional image, respectively. The discrete wavelet transform for the image data sequence x (n) is represented by the following equation. Shall be calculated.

D (n) = x (2 * n + 1) + floor ((x (2 * n) + x (2 * n + 2)) / 2) (Equation 1) s (n) = x ( 2 * n) + floor ((d (n-1) + d (n)) / 4) (Equation 2) In the above equation, floor (X) indicates the maximum integer value not exceeding X, and n is Indicates the address number.

By the above processing, 1
A dimensional discrete wavelet transform process is performed. In the two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform, one-dimensional transform is sequentially performed in the horizontal and vertical directions of an image, and details thereof are publicly known, and thus description thereof is omitted here. FIG. 5C shows a configuration example of a two-level transform coefficient group obtained by a two-dimensional transform process, in which an image is a coefficient sequence HH of a different frequency band.
, HL1, LH1,..., LL. In the following description, these coefficient sequences are called subbands. The coefficients of each subband are output to the subsequent quantization unit 2B.

The region designating section 2E determines a region (ROI: region of interesting) to be decoded with higher image quality than the surrounding portion in the image to be encoded. The region specifying unit 2E receives the coordinate information of the region of interest set by the operator in step S108 of FIG. 2 and indicates which transform coefficient belongs to the specified region of interest during the discrete wavelet transform described above. Generate mask information.

FIG. 6A shows an example when generating mask information. As shown in the left side of FIG.
When the region of interest is designated by the interest pattern registered in advance in step S107 of FIG. 2 (or in the case where the region of interest is designated by the operator in steps S103 to S106 of FIG. 2), the region designation unit 2E When the discrete wavelet transform is performed on the image including the designated region of interest, the portion occupied by the designated region of interest in each subband is calculated and obtained. The area indicated by the mask information is
This is a range including surrounding transform coefficients necessary for restoring an image on the boundary of the designated region of interest.

FIG. 6A shows an example of the mask information calculated by the area designating section 2E on the right side of FIG. In this example, mask information when a two-level discrete wavelet transform is performed on the image on the left side of the figure is calculated as shown in the figure. In the figure, the dotted line is the designated region of interest, and the bits of the mask information in this region are 1 and the bits of the other mask information are 0. Since the entire mask information is the same as the configuration of the transform coefficient by the two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform, by examining the bits in the mask information, it is determined whether the transform coefficient at the corresponding position belongs to the specified region of interest. Can be identified. The mask information generated in this way is
B.

Further, the area specifying section 2E receives a parameter for determining the image quality of the specified area of interest.
The parameter indicating the image quality difference between the region of interest and the non-region of interest specified in step S109 of FIG. 2 corresponds to this. The region designating unit 2E calculates the bit shift amount B for the coefficient in the designated region of interest from this parameter, and outputs it to the quantizing unit 2B together with the mask information.

The quantization unit 2B quantizes the transform coefficient input from the area designating unit 2E by a predetermined quantization step.
An index (quantization index) for the quantized value is output. Here, the quantization is performed by the following equation.

Q = sign (c) floor (abs (c) / Δ) (Equation 3) sign (c) = 1; c> = 0 (Equation 4) sign (c) = − 1; c <0 (Equation 4) 5) Here, c is a transform coefficient to be quantized. Also,
In the present embodiment, it is assumed that the value of Δ includes 1. When Δ = 1, no quantization is actually performed. A parameter corresponding to the image quality of the entire image designated in step S109 in FIG. 2 corresponds to Δ in the above equation. Next, the quantization unit 2
B changes the quantization index by the following equation based on the mask information and the bit shift amount B input from the area specifying unit 2E (a ＾ b represents a raised to the power b).

Q ′ = q * 2 ^ B; m = 1 (Equation 6) q ′ = q; m = 0 (Equation 7) Here, m is a value of mask information at each quantization index position. . With the above processing, only the quantization index belonging to the region of interest specified in step S108 of FIG. 2 is shifted up by B bits in the region specifying unit 2E.

FIGS. 6B and 6C show the change of the quantization index due to the shift up. In FIG. 3B, three quantization indices exist in each of three sub-bands (sub-band 1, sub-band 2, and sub-band 3), and the value of the mask information in the networked quantization index Is 1 and the bit shift B is 2, the quantization indexes after the bit shift are as shown in FIG. The quantization index changed in this way is output to the entropy encoding unit 2C that follows.

The entropy coding unit 2C decomposes the input quantization index into bit planes, performs binary arithmetic coding on a bit plane basis, and outputs a bit stream. FIG. 7 is a diagram for explaining the operation of the entropy encoding unit 2C. In FIG. 7, a non-zero quantization index is 3 in a region within a subband having a size of 4 × 4 (hereinafter referred to as a subband region). Exist,
Each has a value of +13, +6, +3. The entropy coding unit 2C scans this sub-band area to find the maximum value M among the quantization indexes, and calculates the number of bits S necessary to represent the maximum quantization index by the following equation.

S = ceil (log2 (abs (M))) (Equation 8) Here, ceil (x) represents the smallest integer value among integers equal to or larger than x. In FIG. 7, since the maximum value is 13, S is 4 from (Equation 8), and the 16 quantization indices shown in FIG. Processing is performed in units of bit planes. First, the entropy encoding unit 2C outputs the most significant bit plane (M in FIG.
(Indicated by SB) are binary arithmetically encoded and output as a bit stream. Next, the bit plane is lowered by one level, and similarly, each bit in the bit plane is subjected to binary arithmetic coding until the target bit plane reaches the least significant bit plane (represented by LSB in the figure), and the code output unit 2D
Output to At this time, the binary arithmetic coding of each quantization index is performed on this bit immediately after the first non-zero bit is detected in the bit plane scan. Then, the entropy encoding unit 2C generates a header to be described later together with the bit stream for each bit plane described above, and outputs a coded sequence including the header.

FIG. 8 shows the entropy encoder 2 as described above.
FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram illustrating a configuration of a code string generated and output in C. FIG. 1A shows the entire structure of a code string, where MH is a main header, TH is a tile header, and BS is a bit stream. FIG. 3 shows a bit stream for the number S of bit planes and a code string including a tile header.

As shown in FIG. 3B, the main header MH has the size of the image to be encoded (the number of pixels in the horizontal and vertical directions) and the size when the image is divided into a plurality of rectangular tiles. , The number of components representing the number of each color component, the size of each component, and component information representing the bit precision. In the present embodiment, since the image is not divided into tiles, the tile size and the image size take the same value.

Next, the structure of the tile header TH is shown in FIG.
Shown in The tile header TH includes a tile length including a bit stream length and a header length of the tile, an encoding parameter for the tile, mask information indicating a designated region of interest, and a bit shift number B for a coefficient belonging to the region. Is done. The encoding parameters include the level of the discrete wavelet transform, the type of filter, and the like. The configuration of the bit stream in the present embodiment is shown in FIG. In the figure, bit streams are grouped for each sub-band, and are arranged in order of increasing resolution starting from the sub-band having the smaller resolution. Further, in each subband, codes are arranged in units of bit planes from the upper bit plane to the lower bit plane.

In the present embodiment, as described above, the compression ratio of the entire image to be encoded can be controlled by changing the quantization step Δ.

The lower bit planes of the bit planes to be encoded in the entropy encoding unit 2C can be restricted (discarded) in accordance with the required compression ratio.
In this case, all the bit planes are not coded, and the bits from the upper bit plane to the bit planes corresponding to the desired compression ratio are coded and included in the final code string. The parameter indicating the difference between the image quality of the region of interest and the image quality of the non-interest region specified in step S109 in FIG. 2 indicates the number of lower bit planes to be discarded. If the value of the bit shift value B in 6) is increased and the lower bit planes are discarded in accordance with B, the image quality of the non-interest area can be reduced without deteriorating the image quality of the area of interest. Become.
The image encoded by the above method is output from the code output unit 2D and recorded in the image recording unit 3.

Next, a method of reversely decoding the code string generated by the above-described coding processing will be described. 9 indicates the internal configuration of the image processing unit 2. 2
D 'is a code input section, 2C' is an entropy decoding section, 2
B ′ is an inverse quantization unit, 2A ′ is an inverse discrete wavelet transform unit, and 2E ′ is an area extraction unit.

The code input unit 2D 'inputs the code sequence recorded in the image recording unit 3, analyzes each header included in the input code sequence, and extracts parameters necessary for the subsequent processing.
If necessary, it controls the flow of processing or sends out corresponding parameters to each subsequent part. The bit stream included in the code string is output to the entropy decoding unit 2C '.

The entropy decoding unit 2C 'decodes the bit stream in bit plane units and outputs the result. The decoding procedure at this time follows a path opposite to the procedure shown in FIG. 7, and decoding is started in bit plane units in order from the MSB of the bit plane shown in FIG.
The quantization index restored in the form of (a) is output to the inverse quantizer 2B '.

The inverse quantizer 2B 'restores discrete wavelet transform coefficients from the input quantization index based on the following equation.

C ′ = Δ * q / 2 ＾ U; q ≠ 0 (Equation 9) c ′ = 0; q = 0 (Equation 10) U = B; m = 1 (Equation 11) U = 0; m = 0 (Equation 12) Here, q is a quantization index, Δ is a quantization step, and Δ is the same value used at the time of encoding. B is the number of bit shifts read from the tile header, and m is the value of the mask information at the position of the quantization index. c ′ is a restored transform coefficient, which is restored to a coefficient represented by s or d at the time of encoding. The transform coefficient c 'is output to the subsequent inverse discrete wavelet transform unit 2A'. The region extracting unit 2E ′ extracts the value m of the mask information corresponding to the position of the quantization index from the above numerical value, and, based on the position of the mask information that takes a value of 1, extracts the region of interest embedded in the image. The position coordinates are output to the region of interest setting unit 6.

FIG. 10 shows an inverse discrete wavelet transform unit 2
FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of the configuration and processing of A ′. In FIG. 9A, the input transform coefficients are stored in the memory 201. The processing unit 202 performs a two-dimensional inverse discrete wavelet transform by performing a one-dimensional inverse discrete wavelet transform, sequentially reading out transform coefficients from the memory 201 and performing processing. The two-dimensional inverse discrete wavelet transform is performed in a procedure reverse to that of the forward transform. FIG. 2B shows a processing block of the processing unit 202. The input conversion coefficient is subjected to two filter processings of u and p, and is upsampled by the upsamplers 203a and 203b, respectively. , And an image x ′ is output. These processes are performed by the following equations.

X ′ (2 * n) = s ′ (n) −floor ((d ′ (n−1) + d ′ (n)) / 4) (Equation 13) x ′ (2 * n + 1) = d '(n) + floor ((x' (2 * n) + x '(2 * n + 2)) / 2) (Equation 14) Here, (Equation 1), (Equation 2), (Equation 14) 12), (Equation 13)
Since the forward and backward discrete wavelet transforms satisfy the perfect reconstruction condition, if the quantization step Δ is 1 in this embodiment and all the bit planes are decoded in the bit plane decoding, The restored image signal x ′ matches the signal x of the original image, and means lossless conversion (lossless compression) in encoding and decoding.

When the image is restored by the above processing and output to the image input / output unit 1, this image is
Output (display) to the image display unit 5 via the image display control unit 4
It is possible to do.

In the above-described embodiment, the data amount of the code string to be processed is reduced by limiting (ignoring) the lower bit plane to be decoded in the entropy decoding unit 2C ′, and as a result, the compression ratio is limited. It is possible to

According to the image processing apparatus and the image processing method having the above configuration, it is possible to compress and decompress the set region of interest with higher image quality than the non-region of interest. Further, by storing the region of interest in advance, the operator does not have to set the region of interest every time. By adjusting Δ, which is a parameter corresponding to the overall compression ratio, it is possible to reversibly compress the region of interest.

[Second Embodiment] In this embodiment, a method for determining a region of interest is different from the method shown in FIG. That is, the method of determining the region of interest in the present embodiment can further fine-tune the position and / or size of the region of interest after reading the region of interest pattern registered in advance.

FIG. 11 shows a flowchart of a method for determining a region of interest in this embodiment. FIG. 11 is a flowchart in which steps S201, S202, and S203 are added to FIG.

As in the flowchart shown in FIG. 2, the eye image input to the image input / output unit 1 is
Is displayed (step S101). When No is selected in response to the question as to whether or not the region of interest is arbitrarily set (step S102), a previously registered region of interest pattern is read from the region of interest storage unit 7 (step S20).
1) The image is combined with the image of the subject's eye displayed on the image display unit 5 (step S202). Here, for example, a region of interest pattern shown in FIG. 12A is used as the region of interest pattern registered in advance. Note that the region surrounded by the dotted line in FIG.

Next, the operator is asked whether fine adjustment is necessary (step S203). Here, for example, since the operator wants to pay more attention also to the upper side than the displayed region of interest pattern, if Yes is selected, the process proceeds to step S103 and subsequent steps for setting an arbitrary region of interest with the pattern of FIG. Then, the processing shifts. As described above, the operator expands the region of interest using, for example, a pointing device such as a mouse and determines the region of interest (changing the size of the region of interest). FIG. 12B shows the determined region of interest. Similarly, the position of the region of interest can be finely adjusted.

Thereafter, compression processing is performed by a processing method similar to that of the flowchart shown in FIG. 2 so that the image in the region of interest shown in FIG.

According to the above method of determining the region of interest, it has been shown that the position and / or size of the region of interest can be finely adjusted after reading the region of interest pattern registered in advance.

[Third Embodiment] In this embodiment, a method of setting a region of interest is different from the method shown in FIGS. In other words, the method of determining a region of interest in the present embodiment further allows the user to select a plurality of pre-registered region of interest patterns in addition to the method of the first embodiment. The method of adding the step of performing inversion is shown.

FIG. 13 is a flowchart of a method for determining a region of interest according to the present embodiment.

As in the flowchart shown in FIG. 2, the eye image input to the image input / output unit 1 is
Is displayed (step S101). When No is selected in response to the question as to whether or not the region of interest is arbitrarily set (step S102), a region of interest pattern (fundus image effective region pattern) registered in advance from the region of interest storage unit 7 as in the first embodiment. ) Is read (step S107), and is synthesized and displayed with the subject's eye image displayed on the image display unit 5 (step S301).

In this embodiment, since there are two pre-registered region-of-interest patterns, it is asked whether or not to select another region-of-interest pattern (step S302). When the operator inputs an instruction of Yes, the second area of interest pattern is read from the area of interest storage unit 7 (step S303).

Here, for example, a pattern effective when focusing on the macula 1401 of the left eye shown in FIG. 14A or the papilla 1402 of the right eye as shown in FIG. 14B is shown. However, it is assumed here that the operator wants to pay attention to the nipple of the left eye. That is, the first region of interest pattern is individually shown in FIG.
In FIG. 4A, the second region-of-interest pattern is the pattern shown in FIG.

The read second region-of-interest pattern is displayed on the image display unit 5 (step S304), and it is asked whether the displayed second region-of-interest pattern is to be horizontally inverted (step S305). When the operator inputs an instruction of Yes, the second region-of-interest pattern read in step S303 is reversed left and right (step S306), and displayed in combination with the fundus image (step S307). Step S
FIG. 14C shows the image synthesized and displayed in 307.

Next, at step S308, a decision is selected, and when the decision is made, the process proceeds to step S108 as in the flow chart shown in FIG. If the determination is not made in step S308 as shown in FIG. 13, it is determined that there is no optimal region of interest pattern registered in advance, and the process proceeds to step S103.

Thereafter, compression processing is performed by the same processing method as that of the flowchart shown in FIG.

According to the above-described method of determining a region of interest, a plurality of region-of-interest patterns registered in advance can be selected from the same method in the first embodiment. It has been shown that inversion is possible.

[Fourth Embodiment] As a method of determining a region of interest in this embodiment, a method of setting a new region of interest based on a region of interest set in the past will be described.

FIG. 15A shows an eye image of a subject which has been photographed in the past by an external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus. The process of registering a past region of interest will be described below with reference to FIG. 16 showing a flowchart of this process.

An eye image taken in the past may be picked up from an image recording unit 3 as a storage medium such as a magneto-optical disk using a search unit (not shown), or may be picked up from another database server or the like. The information may be read via the communication unit (step S401). Next, the image processing unit 2 performs the above-described decoding process on the read eye image by the units shown in FIG. 9 (step S402), and outputs the decoded eye image to the image input / output unit 1 Output to
At the same time, the region of interest setting unit 6 receives the coordinate information of the region of interest extracted by the region extraction unit 2E ', and outputs the coordinate information to the image display control unit 4. The image display control unit 4 combines the expanded image output from the image input / output unit 1 with the extracted region of interest pattern (steps S403 and S404), and outputs the synthesized image to the image display unit 5, and FIG. (Image of the eye to be examined) is displayed.
In the figure, a star indicates a lesion that has been noted in the past.

Next, the operator is asked whether to register the region-of-interest pattern extracted in step S403 (step S405), and if so, the extracted region-of-interest pattern is registered in the region-of-interest storage unit 7 (step S405). S40
6). This completes the registration operation.

In the present embodiment, an example has been described in which a region of interest is extracted and registered from an image of a subject's eye taken in the past.
In the step of arbitrarily setting a region of interest, a pattern that is frequently used can be registered.

Next, an example will be described in which the image of the subject's eye photographed by an external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus is input to the image input / output unit 1 this time. FIG. 15 (b) shows the image of the subject's eye taken this time, and FIG. 17 shows a flowchart of the processing described later. The flowchart shown in FIG. 17 is different from the flowchart shown in FIG. 11 used in the second embodiment in step S
It is the flowchart which deleted step 201 and added step S501.

The operator who has checked the eye image (FIG. 15 (b)) displayed on the image display unit 5 in step S101 has an optional region of interest registered based on the past eye image. Is selected not to set a region of interest (step S102). Next, the region-of-interest pattern registered in step S406 described above is read (step S501), and is synthesized and displayed on the image of the subject's eye displayed on the image display unit 5 (step S20).
2). FIG. 15C shows the composited image.

The operator who has confirmed the image shown in FIG.
Recognizing that the lesion indicated by the ★ mark has spread in the image of the subject's eye taken this time and protrudes from the region of interest set in the past, it is selected to perform fine adjustment (step S203).
Step S arbitrarily sets the region of interest by the operator.
Fine adjustment of the size of the region of interest is performed according to the steps from step 103 onward, and the size is changed to the size of the region of interest pattern shown in FIG.

Thereafter, a compression process is executed by a processing method similar to that of the flowchart shown in FIG. 2 so that the newly set region of interest has higher image quality than the other regions.

It has been shown that the region of interest can be set based on the region of interest set in the past by the above method of determining the region of interest.

[Fifth Embodiment] In this embodiment, the configuration of the external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus used in the above-described embodiment will be described, and a specific description will be given of an image processing apparatus having the above-described image processing method and operation rules. The configuration is shown.

FIG. 18 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the image processing apparatus of this embodiment and an external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus. The area surrounded by the dotted line A is included in the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, and the area surrounded by the dotted line B is included in the image processing apparatus.

On the optical path from the observation light source 1801 to the objective lens 1802 facing the eye E, a condenser lens 1803, a photographing strobe light source 1804, a ring slit 1805, a mirror 1806, a relay lens 18
07 and a perforated mirror 1808 are sequentially arranged.
On the optical path behind the perforated mirror 1808, a focus lens 1809, a photographing lens 1810, a half mirror 1
811, a switching mirror 1812, a field stop 1813, and an eyepiece 1814 are arranged. Half mirror 18
A fixation target presenting unit 1815 composed of a backlight and a liquid crystal dot matrix is disposed in the optical path on the reflection side of the light source 11, and an aperture is provided in the reflection direction of the switching mirror 1812 when the switching mirror 1812 is at a dotted line position on the optical path. A mask 1816, a field lens 1817, an imaging lens 1818, and an imaging unit 1819 are sequentially arranged.

The output of the imaging unit 1819 is output from the A / D conversion unit 1
820, a memory 1821 for storing the result of the A / D conversion,
D / A for analog display of contents of memory 1821
The converter 1822 and the monitor 1823 are connected. A
/ D converter 1820, memory 1821, A / D converter 1
Reference numeral 822 is connected to a video signal control unit 1824 for controlling each timing and operation, and image data of the memory 1821 is connected to a recording unit 1826 such as a magneto-optical disk via an image processing unit 1825. I have.
The image processing unit 1825 is connected to the CPU 1827. In addition, the CPU 1827 includes a memory 1821, a video signal control unit 1824, a strobe control unit 1828 that controls a strobe light source 1804, a shooting switch 1829,
Further, it is connected to a region-of-interest storage unit 1830 assuming a ROM or a non-volatile memory, and a compression ratio setting unit 1831 capable of inputting or registering parameters for determining the image quality of the region of interest and the non-region of interest.

Next, the operation of observing the fundus Er of the eye to be examined will be described.

A light beam emitted from the observation light source 1801 passes through a condenser lens 1803 and a ring slit 1805, is reflected by a mirror 1806, and is relayed by a relay lens 1807.
Through the objective lens 1802 and the pupil Ep of the eye E to illuminate the fundus Er of the eye. The fundus image illuminated in this way is the pupil E
p, objective lens 1802, hole of perforated mirror 1808, focus lens 1809, photographing lens 1810,
The light passes through the half mirror 1811 and is guided to the field stop 1813 and the eyepiece 1814. The operator performs positioning of the subject's eye E using the optical path for observation. At this time, the subject's eye is in a fixation state by looking at the index presented by the fixation target punctual unit 1815.

Next, the photographing operation of the fundus Er will be described.

When the photographing switch 1829 is depressed when the positioning of the eye E is completed, the CPU 1827 detects the depression and uses the driving unit (not shown) to switch the optical path switching mirror 18.
12 is flipped up to the dotted line portion in FIG. 18 to instruct the video signal control unit 1824 to start preparation for processing. Then, after waiting for the switching mirror 1812 to complete the flip-up, the flash controller 1828 is instructed to start emitting light. The strobe control unit 1828 supplies a strobe light source 1804 with a light emission trigger, so that the energy stored in the main condenser (not shown) is supplied to the strobe light source 1804 to emit a light beam (imaging light beam) for photographing the fundus Er. Is started.

The emitted photographing light beam is supplied to the strobe light source 18.
04, the observation light source 1801 from the ring slit 1805
Illuminates the fundus Er of the subject's eye E through the same optical path as the light flux emitted from the light source, the reflected light is reflected by the optical path switching mirror 1812 jumped up into the optical path, and the aperture mask 1816, the field lens 1817, Image lens 11
A fundus image (fundus fundus image to be inspected) is formed on the imaging unit 1819 via 818. The video signal (fundus eye fundus image signal) obtained from the imaging unit 1819 is digitized by the A / D conversion unit 1820 and is also written to the memory 1821.

When the A / D conversion and the writing to the memory 1821 are completed, the CPU 1827 issues a D / A conversion instruction to the video signal control unit 1824 as necessary, and receives the instruction from the video signal control unit 1824. D / A converter 1
The display unit 822 displays the captured image (fundus fundus image) on the monitor 1823 while sequentially reading the fundus image data written in the memory 1821. FIG. 19 shows the fundus image of the eye to be inspected output to the monitor 1823, and the hatched portion shows the aperture mask 1816 actually imaged.

Next, the CPU 1827 operates the region-of-interest storage unit 1
The region of interest pattern stored in 830 is read. CP
U1827 reads the region-of-interest pattern information and, at the same time, indicates a parameter corresponding to the overall image quality (compression ratio) input or already registered in the compression ratio setting unit 1831 and the difference between the image quality of the region of interest and the image quality of the non-region of interest. Receives and stores parameters.

The structure of the image processing unit 1825 is shown in FIG.
The configuration of the image processing unit 1825 is the same as that of the image processing unit 2 shown in FIG. The image processing unit 1825 is a CPU 182
The transfer of data and the like (position information of the region of interest and the like) is also performed by the CPU 1827. The data encoded by the image processing unit 1825 is recorded in the recording unit 1826.

The image is restored by the above processing, and if the restored image is output to the image input / output unit 1, the eye image data can be output to the monitor 1823.

The above description has shown the configuration of the external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus and the specific configuration of the image processing apparatus according to the first embodiment. Therefore, it is apparent that the above-described image processing apparatus has the operating rules of the image processing apparatus according to the first embodiment and can execute the image processing methods according to the second to fourth embodiments. Therefore, the flowchart of the processing executed by the image processing apparatus according to the present embodiment is the flowchart of the processing described in the first to fourth embodiments, and it is clear from the above description.

In this embodiment, the region of interest storage unit 30
The region-of-interest pattern memorized was a pattern indicating a substantially fundus image effective range in the eye image to be examined, but may be a different pattern depending on the diagnosis purpose of the doctor, or may have a plurality of patterns and be selectively used. May be.

[Sixth Embodiment] FIG. 20 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus and an image processing apparatus according to the present embodiment. Zoom lens 203 composed of lens groups
2. The imaging magnification detection unit 2033 that detects the imaging magnification by detecting the amount of movement of the zoom lens 2032, and detects the position of the dotted line B that is a movable unit including an optical system in FIG. A left and right eye detection unit 2034 for identifying whether the optometry E is the left eye or the right eye is added. The area surrounded by the dotted line A is included in the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, and the area surrounded by the dotted line B is included in the image processing apparatus.

The subject's eye E is photographed by the same method as the operation shown in the fifth embodiment, and is displayed on the monitor 1823.
FIG. 21 shows the displayed eye image to be examined. However, FIG.
(A), (b), and (c) show images photographed at different photographing magnifications by a moving operation on the zoom lens 2032.

When a moving operation is performed on the zoom lens 2032, the photographing magnification detecting unit 2033 that has detected the movement of the zoom lens 2032 calculates the photographing magnification from the detected amount of movement, and notifies the CPU 1827 of the calculated photographing magnification. The CPU 1827 adds a region-of-interest pattern read from the region-of-interest storage unit 1830 before starting the encoding process,
A region of interest pattern is created by multiplying by the photographing magnification detected by the photographing magnification detecting unit 2033. FIG.
(A), (b), and (c) each show a diagram in which a region-of-interest pattern (a pattern within the dotted line in the figure) after calculation according to the photographing magnification is superimposed, and in particular, FIG. In ()), the entire image is set as the region of interest. In this case, the calculation is performed by adding the photographing magnification detecting unit 2033 to the ROI pattern read from the ROI storage unit 1830.
Is multiplied by the detected magnification. If the result exceeds the predetermined image size, the shape of the region of interest may be changed as appropriate to keep it within the predetermined image size. It should be noted that a flowchart for performing the above processing is shown in step S107 in FIG. 2, step S201 in FIG.
3 is a flowchart in which the processing in steps S107 and S303 and in FIG. 17 the processing in step S501 are further multiplied by the imaging magnification to create a new region of interest pattern.

The image of the eye to be inspected shown in FIG. 23 is also captured by the same operation as in the fifth embodiment, and shows the image displayed on the monitor 1823. FIG. 23 (a) shows the image of the left eye.
FIG. 23B shows a right eye image. FIG. 24A shows an example in which one of the region of interest patterns stored in the region of interest storage unit 1830 is superimposed on a region within a dotted line in the figure, and shows a region of interest pattern in which only the nipple is stored with particularly high image quality. .

When the photographing operation described in the fifth embodiment is completed and the image of the subject's eye is fetched into the memory 1821, C
The PU 1827 reads the region-of-interest pattern from the region-of-interest storage unit 1830 and, at the same time, reads left-right or right-eye information (left-right eye information) from the left-right eye detection unit 2034. For example, only the left-eye region-of-interest pattern shown in FIG.
If the left and right eye information read from 4 indicates the right eye,
By performing image processing for inverting the read region-of-interest pattern symmetrically, the region-of-interest pattern for the right eye shown in FIG. 24B is completed.

FIG. 25 shows an image taken in the same manner as in the operation of the fifth embodiment and displayed on the monitor 1823. The operator who sees the image shown in FIG. However, a fixation target presentation unit 1815 using an operation unit (not shown)
Is moved so that the nipple 1501 becomes the center (FIG. 25).
3 shows a state of shooting (so that the image shown in (b) is obtained).

When the photographing operation shown in the fifth embodiment is completed and the image of the eye to be inspected is stored in the memory 1821, the CPU 1827 reads the region of interest pattern from the region of interest storage unit 1830 and simultaneously performs the fixation target control. Part 20
From 35, the fixation target position at the time of shooting is read. For example, if only the ROI pattern of the normal fixation target position shown in FIG. 26A is stored in the ROI storage unit 1830, the normal fixation is performed according to the fixation position information from the fixation target control unit 2035. The amount of movement from the target (position) is converted into the amount of movement on the image, and if the region of interest pattern read based on the converted amount of movement is moved, the center of the nipple 1601 shown in FIG. The region of interest pattern is completed.

In this embodiment, the photographing magnification, the left and right eyes,
The example in which the parameters of the fixation target position are individually operated has been described. However, even when a plurality of parameters are simultaneously operated, it is possible to easily cope with them by combining the respective processes.

The image processing apparatus and the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus according to the present embodiment enable the left eye and the right eye to be distinguished from the subject's eye image photographed by the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus.
It has been shown that an eye image to be inspected can be generated according to the photographing magnification. In addition, it was shown that the region of interest pattern can be moved based on the information of the fixation target position.

[Seventh Embodiment] FIG. 27 is a block diagram showing the configuration of each apparatus in this embodiment. The ophthalmologic photographing apparatus 2700 includes image input hardware and an image processing application therein. Image processing device 2
701 shows an example where it is connected. Image processing device 2701
As an internal configuration, for example, a portion surrounded by a dotted line portion A shown in FIG. 18 is built in the image processing device 2701, the portion other than the dotted line portion A is built in the ophthalmologic photographing device 2700, and a portion for communication between the dotted line portion A and the CPU 1827. Is provided with a communication unit (not shown).

Therefore, the image processing apparatus 2701 can be connected to various types of ophthalmologic photographing apparatuses. The image processing apparatus 2701 can be connected not only directly to the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus but also to a network adapter prepared in a PC or a portable type such as a magneto-optical disk. A configuration in which the image of the eye to be inspected can be input from the recording medium described above can be easily achieved.

As described in the fifth embodiment, the optimum eye region pattern selected as described above can be processed by the image processing device 2701 to process the eye image at different compression ratios inside and outside the eye region. Becomes

In the above configuration, if the parameters of the photographing magnification, the left and right eyes, and the fixation target position described in the sixth embodiment are transferred to the image processing device 2701 via the communication unit (not shown), the sixth embodiment is performed. The same effect can be obtained.

Similarly, when an eye image to be examined is input from a recording medium other than the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, for example, the model information of the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, the photographing magnification, the left and right eyes, and the fixation target position are set in the header of the image file. The same processing can be performed by writing.

[Other Embodiments] In the above embodiments, the present invention is applied to an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus. However, it is apparent that the present invention can be applied to an apparatus for photographing other parts. It is.

The object of the above-described embodiment is to supply a storage medium (or a recording medium) in which a program code of software for realizing the functions of the above-described embodiment is recorded to a system or an apparatus, and to provide the system or the apparatus. It is needless to say that the present invention is also achieved when a computer (or CPU or MPU) reads out and executes the program code stored in the storage medium. in this case,
The program code itself read from the storage medium implements the functions of the above-described embodiment, and the storage medium storing the program code constitutes the above-described embodiment. When the computer executes the readout program codes, not only the functions of the above-described embodiments are realized, but also an operating system (OS) running on the computer based on the instructions of the program codes. It goes without saying that a case where some or all of the actual processing is performed and the functions of the above-described embodiments are realized by the processing is also included.

Further, after the program code read from the storage medium is written into the memory provided in the function expansion card inserted into the computer or the function expansion unit connected to the computer, the program code is read based on the instruction of the program code. , The CPU provided in the function expansion card or the function expansion unit performs part or all of the actual processing,
It goes without saying that a case where the function of the above-described embodiment is realized by the processing is also included.

When the above-described embodiment is applied to the above-mentioned storage medium, the storage medium described above (FIG.
1 or 13 or the flowcharts shown in FIGS. 16 and 17 and other flowcharts described in the above-described embodiments.

[0122]

As described above, according to the present invention, when coding an image of an eye to be inspected, only an image within a remarkable range (within a region) has higher image quality than other ranges. There is an effect of encoding so as to be decoded.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an image processing apparatus according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a process for setting a region of interest in an eye image to be inspected captured by an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus;

3A is a diagram illustrating an eye image to be inspected input from the ophthalmologic photographing apparatus and output to the image display unit 5, FIG. 3B is a diagram illustrating a set region of interest, and FIG. FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating an image in which an image and a region of interest pattern are combined and displayed.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of a configuration of an image processing unit 2.

5A is a diagram illustrating a basic configuration of a discrete wavelet transform unit 2A, FIG. 5B is a diagram illustrating a process configuration in a processing unit 101, and FIG. 5C is obtained by a two-dimensional transform process; FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a two-level conversion coefficient group.

6A is a diagram illustrating an example when mask information is generated, FIG. 6B is a diagram illustrating a quantization index before upshift, and FIG. 6C is a diagram illustrating a quantization index after upshift. FIG.

FIG. 7A is a diagram showing 16 quantization indices, and FIG. 7B is a diagram showing four bit planes.

FIG. 8A is a diagram showing an entire configuration of a code string.
(B) is a diagram illustrating a main header MH, (c) is a diagram illustrating a tile header TH, and (d) is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a bit stream.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an internal configuration of an image processing unit 2.

FIG. 10A shows an inverse discrete wavelet transform unit 2A ′;
FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of the configuration and processing of FIG.
FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a process in a processing unit.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart of a method for determining a region of interest according to the second embodiment of the present invention;

12A is a diagram illustrating a region of interest pattern before fine adjustment, and FIG. 12B is a diagram illustrating a region of interest pattern after fine adjustment.

FIG. 13 is a flowchart of a method for determining a region of interest according to the third embodiment;

FIG. 14 is a diagram showing a region-of-interest pattern for explaining an example of left-right inversion.

15A is a diagram showing a subject's eye image captured in the past by an external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus, FIG. 15B is a diagram showing a subject's eye image captured this time, and FIG. It is a figure which shows an image, and (d) is a figure which shows the size of the pattern of interest to change.

FIG. 16 is a flowchart of a process of registering a past region of interest.

FIG. 17 is a flowchart of a process for setting a region of interest pattern registered in the past.

FIG. 18 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an image processing apparatus and an external ophthalmologic photographing apparatus according to a fifth embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 19 is a diagram showing a fundus image of a subject's eye output to a monitor 1823.

FIG. 20 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an ophthalmologic photographing apparatus and an image processing apparatus according to a sixth embodiment.

21A is a diagram showing an eye image displayed on the monitor 1823, FIG. 21B is a diagram showing an eye image displayed on the monitor 1823, and FIG.
FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an eye image to be inspected displayed in FIG.

22A is a diagram in which a region of interest pattern (a pattern within a dotted line in FIG. 21) after calculation according to the photographing magnification is superimposed on FIG. 21A, and FIG. FIG. 21C is a diagram in which the region-of-interest patterns after calculation according to the magnification (patterns in the dotted line in the figure) are superimposed, and FIG. FIG.

23A is a diagram showing a left eye image, and FIG. 23B is a diagram showing a right eye image.

24A is a diagram showing an example in which one of the region of interest patterns stored in the region of interest storage unit 1830 is superimposed on a region within a dotted line in FIG. 24, and FIG. FIG.

25A is a diagram illustrating an image displayed on the monitor 1823 before the nipple 1501 moves, and FIG. 25B is a diagram illustrating an image displayed on the monitor 1823 after the nipple 1501 moves. It is.

26A is a diagram showing a region of interest pattern at a normal fixation target position, and FIG. 26B is a diagram showing a region of interest pattern for the center of a nipple 1601. FIG.

FIG. 27 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of each device according to a seventh embodiment.

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Claims (27)

[Claims] 1. An image processing apparatus for performing compression encoding on an image, comprising: input means for inputting the image; setting means for setting a region of interest in the image input from the input means; A code sequence generating unit that performs compression encoding by changing a compression ratio between the region of interest and the other region to generate a code sequence, a storage unit that stores the code sequence, and a code sequence stored in the storage unit A decoding unit for restoring the image based on the image processing. 2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the image includes an image of the eye to be inspected. 3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a wavelet transform is used for the compression encoding. 4. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the compression encoding is lossless compression. 5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the input unit inputs the image from a storage medium storing the image or a database server storing the image.
Or the image processing apparatus according to 2. 6. The apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a left and right eye discriminating unit for detecting information on a position of the apparatus for generating the image to generate information for specifying whether the image is an image of the left or right eye to be inspected. The image processing device according to claim 1. 7. The image processing apparatus according to claim 6, wherein the input unit further receives a condition under which the image is generated. 8. The apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the condition includes at least one of model information of a device that has generated the image, a photographing magnification of the image, and a fixation target position. Image processing device. 9. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the setting unit sets an area of an arbitrary size in the image as the region of interest. 10. The image processing apparatus further includes a region of interest image storage unit in which one or more images of the region of interest are stored in advance.
The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the setting unit selects one or a plurality of images of the region of interest from the region of interest image storage unit and sets the image of the region of interest. 11. The image processing apparatus according to claim 10, further comprising left / right inversion means for performing left / right inversion on the image selected from the region of interest image storage means. 12. The apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the setting unit resets information on the image of the region of interest selected from the region of interest image storage unit.
Or the image processing apparatus according to 11. 13. The information on the region of interest includes a position,
13. The image processing apparatus according to claim 12, wherein the size is a size. 14. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said code sequence generating means compresses and encodes an image included in the region of interest with an image of another region at a high compression ratio. An image processing apparatus according to claim 1. 15. The coding generation means generates mask information indicating which transform coefficient belongs to the region of interest, based on the position information of the region of interest, for the transform coefficient obtained by the discrete wavelet transform. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein: 16. The image processing apparatus according to claim 15, wherein the entire mask information has the same configuration as the transform coefficient. 17. The area according to claim 15, wherein the area indicated by the mask information is a range including surrounding transform coefficients necessary for restoring an image on a boundary of the region of interest. Image processing device. 18. The method according to claim 18, wherein the code sequence generating means performs compression encoding of the image using information corresponding to the image quality of the entire image and information indicating a difference in image quality between a region of interest and a non-interest region. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein: 19. The code sequence generating means calculates a bit shift amount of a transform coefficient in a region of interest using information indicating a difference in image quality between the region of interest and a non-region of interest,
19. The image processing apparatus according to claim 18, wherein only the quantization index belonging to the region of interest is bit-shifted by the bit shift amount. 20. The information on the image quality of the entire image,
19. The method according to claim 18, which corresponds to a quantization step.
An image processing apparatus according to claim 1. 21. An image input device for inputting an image and / or information related to the image to an external image processing device, comprising: an imaging unit that generates the image by imaging; an imaging control unit that controls the imaging unit; A detection unit configured to detect a condition at the time of imaging as information regarding the image; and an input control unit configured to control input of the image and / or information related to the image to an external image processing apparatus. Image input device. 22. The image input device according to claim 21, wherein the image includes an image of an eye to be inspected. 23. The apparatus according to claim 21, wherein said detection means further comprises an imaging magnification detection means for detecting an amount of movement of said imaging means and calculating an imaging magnification of said imaging means from said movement amount. The image input device according to the above. 24. The image input apparatus according to claim 21, wherein said detection means further comprises a fixation position detection means for detecting a fixation position. 25. A system comprising: an image input device that inputs an image and / or information related to the image to the image processing device; and an image processing device that performs compression encoding on the image. An image capturing unit configured to generate the image by capturing an image; an image capturing control unit configured to control the image capturing unit; a detection unit configured to detect a condition at the time of the image capturing as information related to the image; Input control means for performing control for inputting information about an image to the image processing apparatus, wherein the image processing apparatus includes: an input means for inputting the image; and a region of interest in the image input from the input means. Setting means for setting, code string generating means for performing compression encoding by changing a compression ratio between the region of interest and the other area to generate a code string, and storing the code string. System characterized in that it comprises storage means, a decoding means for restoring the image based on the code sequence stored in the storage means. 26. An image processing method for performing compression encoding on an image, comprising: an input step of inputting the image to predetermined input means; and a region of interest in the image input from the predetermined input means. A code string generating step of performing a compression encoding by changing a compression ratio between the region of interest and the other area to generate a code string; and storing the code string in a predetermined storage unit. And a decoding step of restoring the image based on the code string stored in the predetermined storage unit. 27. A storage medium for storing a program code that functions as an image processing device that performs compression encoding on an image, wherein: a program code of an input step of inputting the image to a predetermined input unit; A program code of a setting step of setting a region of interest in the image input from the input means, and a code sequence for performing compression encoding by changing a compression ratio between the region of interest and other regions to generate a code sequence A program code for a generation step, a program code for a storage step for storing the code string, and a program code for a decoding step for restoring the image based on the code string stored in the storage means. Storage medium.