“PKDC”

I did some exploratory image compression work in 2017, dba GradientD, in conjunction with VisMed3D‘s Dima Elissa, for our entry into the “Speedy CT Image Delivery” contest held by GE’s community-sourced “Launch Forth” Fuse initiative. This contest challenged entrants to come up with innovative ways to losslessly compress CT scan (DCOM) image data better than could be done with JPEG2000.

DCOM image data, commonly used in medical and industrial applications, often needs to be transferred over the internet in time sensitive scenarios. Better compression means less to transfer, which leads to faster delivery of time-critical assets.

I succeeded inventing a compression algorithm that could beat JPEG2000 in a number of applicable scenarios, especially with industrial applications, such as aircraft parts manufacture.  I called the algorithm “Proto-Key Diff Compression”, or “PKDC”.

We placed 3rd in the contest, but in the interest of retaining intellectual property rights to the invention, we decided to turn down the prize money, applied for a patent, and have been incubating and researching applications of the algorithm in the meantime.